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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE LAST WORD 



BEING 

An Announcement of the Ultimate 
Generalization of Science 

AND 

A Solution of Popular Problems in 
Religion and Philosophy 

BY JAMES AND MARY BALDWIN, PH. M. 




BROADWAY PUBLISHING CO. 

835 Broadway, New York 

BRANCH OFPICBSi CHICAGO. WASHINGTON. BALTIMORE, 
ATLANTA. NORFOLK. FLORENCE. 



^ 



Copyright, 1910, 

By 
ENOS BALDWIN. 



CCI.A278547 



To 
OUR FATHER 



CONTENTS 

The Ultimate Generalization op Science 
announced 

PAGE 

Preface. The Goal of Science 7 

Section I. The Infinity of Mentation Wi 

Section II. The Law of Mentation 42 

Applied 

Section III. The Last Word in Religion 50 

Section IV. The Last Word in Government . 76 

Section V. The Last Word in Morality 87 

Section VI. The Last Word in Art 94 

Section VII. The Last Word in Education . . 100 



PREFACE 

THE GOAL OF SCIENCE 

"Then said the Shepherds one to another, Let us 
here show to the Pilgrims the gates of the Celestial 
City, if they have skill to look through our perspec- 
tive glass. . . . Then they essayed to look, but 
the remembrance of that last thing that the Shep- 
herds had shown them made their hands shake; by 
means of which impediment they could not look 
steadily through the glass ; yet they thought they 
saw something like the gate, and also some of the 
glory of the place. Then they went away, and sang 
this song: 

" 'Thus, by the shepherds, secrets are reveal'd, 

Which from all other men are kept conceal'd' . . ." 
— The Pilgrim's Progress. 

So, in his pilgrimage from the City of Destruction, 
Man has now reached those Delectable Mountains 
whence the Gate of Ultimate Reality comes within 
range of his Science. Yet, because he is impeded 
still by doubt, fearing his Shepherds' last showing, — 
"that there is a way to hell, even from the gates of 
heaven," — and because he compromises still with the 

3i 



8 PREFACE 

perspectives of ancient and alien eyes, chanting the 
song of the Over-man to whom 

"Secrets are reveal'd, 
Which from all other men are kept conceal'd," 

the thousand philosophies which have sprung up in 
our day, as so many visionary exclamation points, 
are woefully shaky. Nevertheless, they do testify, 
in the totality of their contradictory half truths, to 
an objective whole Truth, and, by the unanimity of 
their optimism, to the glory of that consummate 
Verity. 

Is Man ready to pronounce that last word in 
Science which shall make his Chaos a true Universe? 
Yes! 

The individual most astonished by the mighty 
mediaeval Reformation was Martin Luther. He 
nailed his thesis to the church-door and went to bed 
a lonely free-thinker. He awoke an international 
leader of authority. Already for long the people 
had been thinking and d}ang at the stake for their 
inarticulate Idea. And thus always, in the past, the 
prescient populace, wanting only Voice, has hung 
helplessly upon the slow lips of the Philosopher, the 
Priest, the Poet, the Politician and the Pedagogue. 
To-day, in our Wilderness of dying churches, cor- 
rupt administrations, depraved arts and futile 
schools the people are turning from their hereditary 
Shepherds. But not helplessly. Now, for the first 
time in history, the humble Man of Business is find- 
ing his own tongue. And his forthcoming word is 
the final Wisdom of Science and universal Gospel. 



PREFACE 9 

It is the program of the following sections to 
briefly enunciate, in language as little technical as 
possible, the ultimate Generalization of universal 
Science, and to indicate its practical application in 
the solution of metaphysical, theological, political, 
ethical, esthetical and educational problems. 

THE LAST WORD in Science is that ultimate 
and universal Truth which includes and concludes all 
other truths. Each of the minor sciences observes, 
assembles, relates and classifies a particular kind of 
reality. Universal Science, or what is rightly called 
Philosophy, in turn observes, assembles and relates 
these minor classifications of temporary and limited 
particularity in a major Classification of eternal and 
infinite generality. 

Figuratively speaking, the philosophical Scientist 
essays to take a standpoint so lofty that he includes 
within his view all the diverse phenomena of Life, 
and from that vantage point to so fit together the 
parts of the world picture-puzzle — including himself 
—that they form a co-related, artistic Whole. In 
other words, he attempts to rationalize or explain all 
diversities by composing them in a self-explanatory 
Unity, a Uni-verse. The difficulty of such a task is 
evident. No figure of speech can adequately con- 
vey the enormity of that assumption which requires 
an Observer of not only the spectacular but all other 
varieties of sensory data, whose standpoint is every- 
where, and whose endurance is tireless. Indeed, the 
last Word is only made rationally possible for this 
generation by the recorded collaboration and coinci- 
dental testimony of countless preceding scientists 



10 PREFACE 

and scientific philosophers. And, accordingly, before 
taking the final step up which shall give us the all- 
inclusive viewpoint, it is well not only to have firmly 
underfoot the apex of latest achievement, but also 
to glance backward along the entire length of the 
scientific Pilgrimage even to the Slough of Despond. 
For it is assumed that, with all its ancient errancies, 
that pathway points, in the long run, to the goal; 
and that even the wanderings in the wilderness of 
those who saw through a glass most darkly offer a 
negative guide of warning value for the direction of 
the present forward step. In this Preface, the Last 
Word is then to be provisionally defined by point- 
ing out the definite trend in the general course of 
civilized man's actual quest for knowledge in the 
past. 

The organized cooperation in Science, which 
makes possible a rapid ascent from minor to major 
generalizations, is of very late development. Even 
in relation to such a common and fundamental sub- 
ject as agriculture scarcely more than two genera- 
tions have passed since specialists began to collect, 
compare and classify accurate observations leading 
to general principles of knowledge. And the dis- 
covery of crop rotation is not more recent than that 
of the circulation of the human blood. The "wise 
men" of ancient times, granting them the most hon- 
orable intentions, must therefore have proceeded to 
sooth-say or philosophize upon an insecure basis. 
Despairing of the then unattempted task of harmon- 
izing the whole of experience they were obliged, in 
order to give authority to their unsupported gen- 
eralizations and to justify the fanciful stop-gaps in 



PREFACE 11 

their fact foundations, to call in the aid of a super- 
human Harmonizer such as a Creator or First Prin- 
ciple, an Ultimate Equilibration or Judgment Day. 
This short-cut scheme of referring the inequalities, 
perplexities and contradictions of present life to a 
remote and hence unquestionable Harmonizer is the 
method of transcendental Metaphysics and old-school 
Theology. Obviously, the ultimate problem of Sci- 
ence, the rationalization of the Universe, is compli- 
cated rather than resolved by adding to the diversi- 
ties of Life, already despaired of as inherently in- 
harmonious, an inherently harmonious Principle or a 
Being who, by his very Superhumanity, lies outside 
of human Science. Such an act is at best an act of 
Speculation or Superstition. And yet as the only 
method available to the would-be philosopher of old, 
it acquired usage and reputation. The interpreters 
of dreams, readers of the stars, inspired prophets, 
oraculists and necromancers in black and white 
magic were of high standing in bygone society. So 
much so that their academic successors to this day 
need only, to speak a sufficiently mystical language 
to win for themselves the respect of the plain speak- 
ing workaday world. 

What is the essence of the speculative or super- 
stitious Ideal that was substituted by necessity for 
the Scientific Idea? The Scientist may not sit down 
at ease and experimentally fit together his cosmic 
picture-puzzle as one might handle passive bits of 
cardboard, for everything in this world-puzzle is 
in motion. The Scientist must harmonize in his ra- 
tional scheme of things such opposites as the sensual 
libertine and the saintly mother, both equally real 



12 PREFACE 

facts. But even as he would put these opposites in 
their proper places, they may change. The libertine 
undergoes conversion ; the mother, degeneration. 
Moreover, the Scientist is subjectively in motion. 
His very sense organs, his instruments for assem- 
bling scientific data, alter in accuracy from day to 
day. And the Fancy of his youth is not the Ideality 
of his maturity. It is this movement without and 
within, this vagrant freedom of Nature in Time and 
Space, which has most appalled philosophers of all 
ages. And naturally the earliest scientists of all, 
confronted by the whole problem and by a world, 
too, in which the actual disorder was maximum (for 
it must not be forgotten that science has reacted 
continually in later days to co-relate the human 
world) were the most disheartened of all. That is 
to say, the earliest metaphysicians and theologians 
required of their Superhuman Ideal, a maximum 
Charity of harmonizing movement without, whilst 
they sought for themselves, with a view to restrain- 
ing the general confusion, the most absolute non- 
motion or Human Fixity within. 

But the quiet confinement of the astrologer's sky- 
chamber, the alchemist's dungeon, the anchorite's 
cell and the scholar's library were meanwhile denied 
to the unprofessional philosophers. And it must not 
be forgotten that even the humblest of the men who 
carry on the world's work has his philosophy of life, 
incomplete and unexpressed though it may be. From 
the beginning, men of business have perforce ac- 
quired knowledge not by superhuman Charity nor in 
cultivated non-motion, but through a process of ac- 
tive realization. And though it is true that the 



PREFACE 13 

masses have ever been of speculative and supersti- 
tious temperament, easily led astray by professional 
authority, it is equally true that the professional 
philosopher has always been dependent, in the last 
analysis, on the man of business for his living and 
has consequently been obliged to constantly retrim 
his Ideal to suit the common cumulative Idea. 

When we take into account these factors, it will 
be plain that the History of Science may be stated, 
essentially, as the resultant of a battle between the 
Ideal of Human Fixation (Abstraction from the 
Here-place and Now-time) and the Idea of Human 
Motion (Traction in the Here-place and Now-time). 
A review of thought-systems typical of past beliefs 
will disclose a steady progress from pessimism to 
optimism with reference to the value of harmonizing 
Human Movement, and a corresponding progress 
from optimism to pessimism with reference to Super- 
human (Movement) Charity. This progress is the 
only real progress in human life history. It is a ten- 
dency which logically leads to the total destruction 
of speculative Metaphysics and superstitious The- 
ology. And, therefore, is never apparent in the 
academic histories of so-called Philosophy and Re- 
ligion. 

From the foregoing, it is to be expected that the 
oldest of earth's philosophers idealized Human non- 
motion or Fixity most absolutely. The oldest phi- 
losophies of which we have record are those of In- 
dia, Egypt and China. Chinese philosophy is no- 
toriously non-progressive on the human side. The 
three important doctrines of the Indian thought-sys- 
tem are Nirvana, the Transmigration of Souls, and 



14 PREFACE 

Caste. Nirvana does not mean nothingness after 
death. It means exactly Human Fixity. The Indian 
heaven is simply Rest, after the torturing human 
Transmigration movement upon earth. The demand 
on Superhuman Charity is ultimate, a complete ab- 
sorption and preservation, — the miracle of Perpetual 
Non-Motion. Personally, the Indian philosopher or 
fakir is supreme in the practice of idealized abstrac- 
tion with suspended movement. Caste is systematic 
limitation of human movements. The Egyptians ex- 
pressed the same philosophy in materialistic terms. 
The pyramids and embalmed mummies are signifi- 
cant protests against human change. 

The next grand stage in the scientific quest is 
fairly represented by the typical philosophies of an- 
cient Greece, — Stoicism and Epicureanism. The 
Stoic feels the instability of the human world to be 
an evil. He looks to supernatural Charity — Fate, 
Nemesis, etc., for fixational relief in equating human 
diversities. But he also admits that there is so 
much of idleness or indifference among the gods them- 
selves that a man must a little exercise himself here 
upon earth to hold his own. He moves very little — 
only by way of internal stiffening in resistance to 
what would otherwise be an overwhelming motion. 
Yet he voluntarily moves and so advances the world's 
philosophy. The Epicurean is as pessimistic as the 
Stoic. He holds it better not to have been born into 
this mortal world. Yet he believes that by exercis- 
ing himself so slightly as to choose with careful sense 
discrimination between lesser and greater ills as they 
immediately present themselves to him he may side- 
step through life with a tempered felicity. 



(PREFACE 15 

The next stage is that of Roman thought. Roman 
philosophy is Grecian philosophy a trifle more hope- 
ful in relation to human motion. The Roman Stoic 
is not content with merely stiffening himself to endure 
ills as they must needs come. He is capable of 
heroically seeking them out to increase the stiffening 
sensation. The Roman Epicurean in the same way 
ceases simply to exercise passive selection. He goes 
after the lesser evils. He crowds the banquet board 
with comparative goods. Bacchus failing in sufficient 
charity of good cheer, he sets the festive laurel on his 
own brow. He has more faith in human digestion. 

The early Mediaeval Scholastic metaphysicians and 
Catholic theologians are next in order. The human 
world is still for them mainly an evil place — a Struc- 
ture of Sophistry, a Valley of the Shadow of Death, 
through which the majority wander foolishly, sin- 
fully, to their certain damnation. Yet there is a 
straight and narrow road to truth through exercise 
in Logic; a straight and narrow path to heaven 
through attendance on Ritual. There are to be done 
studious works of straitened sort, — the copying of 
the masters. There are to be done holy works of 
tempered kind, — praying, preaching and proselyting. 
Later, the Medievalist travels as student and mis- 
sionary, organizes universities and churches, prints 
books, punishes heresies, combats infidels. His move- 
ment increases. He sets aside the feudal restrictions, 
sacred and secular. There develop the overflowing 
movements of Reformation and Renaissance. 

With the dawn of the Modern era, we find yet more 
serious symptoms of a loss of popular faith in Super- 
human Charity. It is a time of open skepticism and 



16 PREFACE 

free thought. It is a time of revolution and free ac- 
tion. It is a time of exploration and novelization. 
Adventure and Romance free themselves from their 
classic shackles. More recently, the scientist takes 
on his proper name. He reaches out for the stars 
with man-made instruments, and astrology becomes 
astronomy. He emerges with a new faith in human 
and even sub-human movement called the Theory of 
Evolution. Liberty of action becomes a battle-cry. 
The age of Industry opens. 

To-day, pessimism respecting human activity has 
given way to meliorism. That is to say, the balance 
has turned from pessimism toward optimism. The 
spiritual meliorist has not forsworn his superhuman 
heaven of the hereafter, but he is getting more in- 
terested in human heaven-building here. He is bring- 
ing the Ideal back from its abstraction out of Now- 
time. The materialistic meliorist is similarly bring- 
ing his Ideal back from its abstraction out of the 
Here-place. His superhuman is still cherished, but 
it takes on the character of a Superman to be real- 
ized by human effort. The man of the modern spirit, 
thus reassured of the nearness of his Ideal, no longer 
seeks "the eternal verities" for the purpose of being 
charitably absorbed in them, of resting on "the ever- 
lasting arms." He backs up to them rather as a 
last resort in the battle of human endeavor. For him 
the fight ceases to be a retreat. Man comes to a 
stand. He even cries, Advance. The motto of old 
China is: Forward! The menticulturists begin to 
speak with hortative pugnacity. Fear-thought is de- 
cried as folly. The physiculturists denounce Illness 
as crime. Various spokesmen of human progress ap- 



PREFACE 17 

pear in prophecies the most audaciously optimistic 
ever uttered. 

If that assumption of historical progress in sci- 
ence which was made the basis of the preceding re- 
view be justified, it should be possible to show an es- 
sential unity in all the popular thought-systems of 
any particular period of time. To test that general 
assumption and the validity of the particular cri- 
terion already demonstrated, let us examine for unity 
a number of our contemporary philosophers chosen 
from the most diverse quarters and without regard to 
their antagonisms as prejudged by the conventional 
metaphysical and theological standards. 

Among the most eloquent of meliorists are Charles 
Ferguson ("The Religion of Democracy") and 
Friedrich Nietzsche ("Beyond Good and Evil"). 
Ferguson strikes a hard blow at Superhuman 
Charity: "There is no Destiny — there are only Op- 
portunity and an infinite waiting for the coming of 
the poets and the artists who shall rejoice in Life 
on any terms. . . ." But Ferguson still clings 
to the fixed Ideal of Unanimity for limiting human 
"Life." Nietzsche, in the same spirit, strikes his 
blow at Superhuman Charity : "God is dead." He is 
optimistic to rhapsody in painting the future Super- 
man. But he, too, qualifies his "Laughing Lion" by 
the deadly Ideal of Power (Abstracted motion). The 
Superman may dictate, but he may not labor. 

The most popular of contemporary philosophers 
are William James ("The Meaning of Truth") and 
Mary Baker Eddy ("Science and Health"). As the 
professional theologians have been more and more 
put to it to reconcile their disagreements, they have 



ftlg PREFACE 

sought to get a foundation for popular religious 
unity by reducing their gods to the least common 
denominator. And inasmuch as their deities lie 
wholly in the realm of speculation, this reductive 
process leads to a spiritual zero. In recoil from this 
inevitable defeat, they now boldly resolve upon a 
common divinity which shall wear all the fixed ideals 
or abstract virtues with which any worshiper may 
choose to endow Him, — Perfect Truth, Perfect Love, 
Perfect Beauty, etc. ; and who shall at the same time 
usurp the place of the human with his destructive 
critical faculty. The result is the God-Mind of 
Christian Science. 

In exactly the same way the transcendental meta- 
physicians have been forced to reduce their princi- 
ples to the least common denominator with the result 
that their contradictory speculations lead to a verit- 
able zero. This state, frankly acknowledged, is what 
is popularly known as Pragmatism. Pragmatism is 
the negation of non-scientific philosophy. And here 
again, just as the zero is stretched by the theosophist 
so as to swallow himself and disarm human science, 
so Pragmatism is stretching its emptiness to make a 
valid Truth of its untruths. Professor James is 
among those who have struggled most valiantly to 
give Pragmatism a positive value. What is signifi- 
cant for this review is the fact that Truth is stated 
by him in terms of Human Motion. He defines the 
"truth" to be the expedient in the way of our think- 
ing, and the "good" the expedient in the way of our 
behaving. Of course, he hastens professionally to 
qualify the "expediency" of his definition with all of 
the James' ideals carefully abstracted from the pres- 



PREFACE 19 

ent time and place. Says he : "The really vital ques- 
tion for us all is, What is this world going to be? 
What is life eventually to make of itself?" The value 
of Pragmatism in the present place is evidently — 
nothing. 

No one exceeds Mrs. Eddy in humane optimism: 
"Sin is a lie." She brings the Superman farther 
down from his abstraction in the clouds. And the 
emphasis in Christian Science is on the human side — 
the ability of the human mind to move over and close 
that gap between God-mind and man-mind which 
causes the delusions of evil. As the fallacy of pure 
Pragmatism or the Denial of general human Truth 
is traceable to its originator in the very act of de- 
nial — ir. the effort to convince other humans of the 
general Truth of his own Idea; just so is the fallacy 
of Christian Science exhibited by its apostle in the 
act of proving its validity by sensory evidences of 
the cures of those diseases the very existence of which 
is theoretically denied. Thus, the validity of human 
movement is doubly emphasized in the theory and 
practice of these two Idealisms. 

Esthetes of the new melioristic thought are Allen 
Upward ("The New Word") and Hugo Miinster- 
berg ("The Eternal Values"). Both sing a world in 
harmony. But, notably, this harmony is one of mo- 
tion. Upward, whose above-named book is the most 
remarkable intuitional writing of recent times, poet- 
ically conceives a "metastrophe" of universally har- 
monizing volutions. Change "volutions" to "voli- 
tions," and you have the pseudo-philosophy of Miin- 
sterberg. For Upward, Strength is the vital Reality 
and all Strength is Going Strength. He tries to say 



20 PREFACE 

Motion. In the heavy psalmody of Miinsterberg the 
refrain is : The real world is deed. For neither, how- 
ever, is philosophy erected on the basis of science. 
By the academician that basis is expressly scorned. 
Upward employs the "ragamuffin" Imagination to 
confute the Scientist. 

Among the most advanced of present day philoso- 
phers proper are Arthur Kenyon Rogers ("The Re- 
ligious Conception of the World") and Henri Berg- 
son ("Creative Evolution"). Bergson carries the 
evolutionary theory to a radical issue. The essential 
nature of the universe is understood by him in terms 
of development; and he deprecates the philosopher's 
detachment from the active human world. The 
proper business of the intellect consists in an ex- 
change of insights, got from experience, which, cor- 
recting and supplementing one another, will enlarge 
human nature, "and in the end enable it to transcend 
itself." In the last phrase we have the fatal trace of 
the transcendental Ideal. The goal is still the re- 
mote Superman. In fact, Bergson's philosophy is 
but an elaboration of that expressed by G. B. Shaw 
in an address on the New Theology, wherein he re- 
jected "the entirely gratuitous assumption that the 
force behind the universe is omnipotent." Its Su- 
perhuman Charity, in other words, is faulty, if not 
independable. We must conceive of it as blindly cre- 
ative, experimenting with birds, reptiles, animals, try- 
ing them and always rising higher until man is dis- 
covered. The role of life is to bring about unfore- 
seen variations which, however, are worthless unless 
they proceed in a single undefined direction — Super- 
humanward. 



PREFACE 21 

Professor Rogers, who is distinguished by the 
clearness of his writings on abstruse subjects, signifi- 
cantly asserts in preface that the philosopher need 
not cease to be a man in order to philosophize. He 
defines the universe in accordance with the popular 
religious conception of "the fatherhood of God and 
brotherhood of man." The world is a society of spir- 
itual selves in which one member, God, represented by 
the natural or so-seeming material world, stands in 
a special relation to all the other members. So that 
the entire conscious experience of all human selves is 
unified in meaning or purpose by its inclusion in the 
God-spirit. He insists, however, that this inclusion 
of man in God is one of knowledge simply and that 
the human self is not only as real and necessary to 
the entire society as the God-self, but that man's 
conscious life, his feelings, sensations, etc., are his 
alone. 

The vital superiority of this conception over the 
older idealism is that it brings the transcendental 
over-soul nearer to the realm of reality. The weak- 
ness of the conception is the failure to definitely 
place the over-soul. It is urged that "the very point 
of the conception is that reality consists of selves in 
relation." But what is this relation between man 
and God? In a foot-note it is admitted that no con- 
scious change in man can take place which is not ac- 
companied by at least a brain change. Since the 
brain change is part of God's life, it must follow that 
man's life corresponds to part of God's life. And yet 
man and God are spoken of as cooperative; every 
human thought involving the "reaction" of divine 
experience. Obviously, this is a misuse of the term 



22 PREFACE 

"reaction." Science assures us that the physical 
world conserves its own energy or continuity of mo- 
tion, and hence cannot be said to be acted upon by 
human consciousness. 

Professor Rogers' idea, though avowedly based 
upon the old conception, — Fatherhood of God and 
Brotherhood of Man, — is in reality a product of 
a typical modern viewpoint, according to which 
"Fatherhood" might better be expressed as "Mother- 
hood." The Father conception of God is one of an 
ancient and pessimistic patriarchal day. It is the 
conception of the divine Worker, the primal Creator, 
of the Punisher and Rewarder; of the One-to-be- 
Feared-and-Obeyed. The Motherhood conception is 
nearer to the modern spirit of Mother-Nature wor- 
ship. It humbles the olden paternal god-self to a 
posture of relative passivity and elevates the filial 
man-self to higher activity. The minds of men in this 
conception lie in the midst of the god-mind as off- 
spring wrapped in the maternal womb. As these 
offspring grow in importance, the parent wanes in 
authority. The newer idea forces upon the god-self 
a share of the imperfection of humanity and exacts 
in return a share of the perfecting glory of the 
creator. It is practically a humiliation of cosmic 
Charity and an exaltation of humanity. As religion, 
it still bears the flaw of charity. But it is charity of 
a refined and subtle opportunism: Give me a job, 
tools, strength, — and I'll work. Why human work 
is necessary for happiness; how the work may be 
creditably motivated to man who is himself originated 
by the working god-self; the principle of relation- 
ship between the human collaborators of the "society 



PREFACE 23 

of selves"; what the work itself is, etc., are unex- 
plained. 

Here it is important to note only that the emphasis 
is again upon human motion. The society is co- 
operative. 

Rogers' human Ideal is Character. Not, however, 
so much the fixed character of conventional theology, 
as character in the making, character which is being 
developed by human selves in reaction upon the (to 
them) indeterminate variations of the natural or 
God-spirit environment. No better definition of the 
purely melioristic temperament can be found than is 
contained in these typically lucid sentences of Pro- 
fessor Rogers: "For already, in the highest attain- 
ment of man there is at least the promise of that re- 
fined product of human character which, because it 
so wills, can make its circumstances tributary to 
good, no matter what their crude form may be. And 
when once this attitude is reached, — when man has 
been schooled by events to a true practicalism or 
realism which blinks no fact of experience ; which ac- 
cepts facts freely as raw material of its action with- 
out losing itself in dreams of what might have been ; 
which refuses to live in a fool's paradise where truth 
is subordinated to our wishes ; and which yet, in spite 
of all this, sees in these same facts, ugly and hard 
though they may at first appear, the matter for a 
complete remodeling, which finds in the real the ideal 
present, not indeed as a finished result, but as that 
which the human will is determined to make out of 
the real, — then we have the possibility of the prac- 
tical optimism of which I have been speaking." This 
is strong talk for the metaphysician. One begins to 



24 PREFACE 

be interested in the present process of valuation to 
the exclusion of the value of the "refined product," 

The following excerpt is remarkable for the thor- 
oughness with which it combats the abstraction from 
time: "And finally our activity is felt to be worth 
while in itself, and so is accompanied by the inner 
realization of value. For purpose, in the sense of 
realized meaning, need not carry with it the implica- 
tion of something partial and incomplete, of some- 
thing not yet attained, but only aimed at. It may be 
divorced from the notion of want and lack of attain- 
ment, of mere aspiration and striving. To free our- 
selves from the superstition that an end looks always 
beyond the present act, that means and end are 
separate and distinct, and to be able to find the doing 
of things from moment to moment an end in itself, 
carrying the sense of its own significance, is indeed 
a large element in the wisdom of life, without which 
life's whole satisfaction is continually put off and 
sacrificed." 

We have now sufficiently traversed the ground of 
scientific history. We have found in the older phi- 
losophies a large measure of faith in human Fixity. 
And in the recent melioristic philosophies — all com- 
promises with the old systems, compromises neces- 
sarily of half truths since the whole truth cannot be 
compromised — we have noticed absurd and danger- 
ous sophistries. Yet, rising above these infirmities 
there is evident a growing optimism based on a firmer 
actual Knowledge. Everywhere we find to-day a be- 
lief in the coming of happiness by human means. In 
the long course of mankind's quest for the wisdom of 
Life we have seen the waning of optimistic faith in 



PREFACE 25 

Superhuman Harmonizing Movement or Cosmic 
Charity and a steady growth of optimistic experience 
in Human Movement. We are prepared, therefore, 
to face about and hazard a reasonably safe conclu- 
sion as to the general direction of the ultimate for- 
ward step in Science. 

If the momentum of the tendencies just noticed 
carries but a stage further, it is plain that the Ideal 
of Human Fixation must entirely disappear and the 
Idea of Human Movement must take its place. This 
purified Idea would raise the Will to Power, of 
Nietzsche, to the Will to Potentiation, lift the Expe- 
diency, of James, to the Expediency of Expedition; 
advance the Unanimity, of Ferguson, to the Unan- 
imity of Animation ; promote the Evolution, of Berg- 
son, to the Evolution of Volution ; exalt the Practic- 
alism, of Rogers, to the Practicalism of Practice; 
convert the Mind, of Eddy, to the Mind of Menta- 
tion. 

And already, as has been hinted in introduction, 
this pure motional Idea is finding its spokesmen. 
Turning from present-day professional philosophers 
to the common people, we find a new figure in society, 
the modern Man of Business. He moves to move. 
He wills to will. He lives to live. He is up to date 
in present Time. His feet are solid on the here 
Place. He plays the Game for the Sport and not the 
Counters. His Business is Busyness. 

Such is the deduction from historical sequence. It 
will next be shown that the universal Generalization 
of a purely reasoned inductive Science offers a re- 
liable Idea more conducive to present and future hap- 
piness than the most attractive Ideal of Charity. 



The Last Word 

SECTION I. 

THE INFINITY OF MENTATION. 

In preface we sought to indicate not, after the 
fashion of conventional criticism, what are the dif- 
ferences between the various thought-systems, but 
what is a common value in all of them. This value, 
increasingly emphasized with the passage of time, 
was shown to be the Human Motion Idea. And it is 
proposed in this Section to identify that motional 
Idea with the ultimate universal Generalization of in- 
ductive Science. 

What is the major Truth which includes and con- 
cludes all other truths? What is the essence of 
Truth? What is the infinite Truth of finite truths, 
long sought as the Philosopher's Stone, which, be- 
cause it unifies and harmonizes all things, offers a 
solution to every practical problem of life; defines 
man's right relation to his fellow man, his wife, his 
child, his property; offers an indisputable criticism 
in Art, Politics and Religion? This and no less is 
the goal now sought by the Last Word. And the in- 
ductive method to which we are herein pledged de- 
mands that we begin to build upon the lowest 
grounds of common knowledge. 

27 



28 THE LAST WORD 

Fortunately for our inquiry, men have been so 
long in the habit of comparing their experiences that 
we are already provided with something to work on 
in the shape of a set of building blocks warranted to 
be universally valid. Those who have made no study 
of natural philosophy will possibly be surprised to 
learn that Scientists have succeeded in reducing the 
world at large to six grand elements : Matter, En- 
ergy, Motion, Ether, Space and Time. In our quest 
of a Universal Ultimate Generalization, it will be 
necessary to deny the existence of all but one of these 
realities. 

Beginning with Matter, let us examine the reality 
of the substance embodied in an ordinary pair of 
shoes, for example. "Seeing is believing," and so a 
reliable evidence of matter here may be considered the 
visible appearance of the shoes. But as there are no 
two eyes or human cameras of exactly the same phys- 
ical structure, it follows that the color, shape and 
size of the shoes must appear differently to each dif- 
ferent observer, and to the blind man have no exist- 
ence whatever. A similar fluctuation will result from 
an appeal to any of the other senses, not excluding 
touch and its impressions of extension and impene- 
trability (two qualities which some stubborn sci- 
entists would insist upon holding constant for the 
real reason that extension seems to be necessary to 
preserve that other grand ultimate, Space; and im- 
penetrability is an excuse for potential Energy. But 
this is dishonest wire-pulling and log-rolling.) We 
must conclude so far that Matter is universal only as 
a source of possible sensations. 

And if the appeal be carried to the higher court 



I 

THE LAST WORD 29 

of thought and feeling based upon these possible sen- 
sations, the results are even more inconstant. The 
practical philosophers of the world, the men of busi- 
ness, put a selling price upon footwear which is sup- 
posed to represent to the fullest extent its common 
exchange value or universal reality. But men of 
business understand that this value is only a symbolic 
approximation to reality, just as tan color is a verbal 
symbol upon which many will agree whilst no two see 
the same degree of yellow. In other words, this gen- 
erally accepted exchange price of the shoes must al- 
ways include a purely private, arbitrary and non- 
universal profit margin. And if the shoe seller offers 
shoes at cost value to himself he is but naming the 
speculative selling price of a particular wholesaler 
or manufacturer. Moreover, this selling price is by no 
means the measure of a constant meaning for all pos- 
sible purchasers. For the rich buyer, the fixed value 
or equivalent reality of the shoes may mean a passing 
whim; for the poor man, a bitter sacrifice; for the 
society belle, the high heels may represent the satis- 
faction of vanity; for the health-seeker, the same 
high heels may be realized as an abomination ; for the 
footless cripple, the shoes are a useless extravagance ; 
for the iron worker, a vital necessity. As there are 
no two feet exactly alike in Nature, so the pair of 
shoes will serve no two men equally for walking. 
That is to say, no fixed reality of the shoes is uni- 
versal in Space. Nor is such a value ultimate in 
Time. Every instant, the shoes are losing in style 
to represent a loss for the high-class seller and a pos- 
sible bargain for the low-grade buyer. Nor is our 
illustrative subject at fault. There is actually no 



30 ffHE LAST WORD 

commodity, not even one of ordinary food substance, 
which is not rated in all degrees from minimum to 
maximum in the minds of earth's citizens. 

Nevertheless, it is apparent that, though men differ 
in valuing the most common things, including even 
the ancient elements : earth, air, fire and water, they 
do practically acknowledge the existence of them as 
possibly affecting and effecting facts. In some con- 
ceivable way, the shoes may become part of every 
man's consciousness. In the language of science, our 
pair of shoes are for all men "a permanent possibility 
of sensation" (sensation being here used broadly as a 
unit of consciousness). 

The only real evidence of Matter before us, then, 
is Motion. For all of the sensations — color, taste, 
sound, etc., — which may be produced by the shoes 
are actually known as measurable modes of motion. 
So, also, are the two pretenders — extension and im- 
penetrability. Without troubling to expand the 
shoes to a gaseous condition in which neither of these 
qualities would be realized at all, it is enough to point 
out that the sensation of Extension is based upon 
Motion. To the unsophisticated babe, the world 
presents itself as a flat picture, and only the roam- 
ing eye, the reaching hand and progressing feet de- 
velop spacial experience. Obviously, Impenetrability 
is purely a Motion-In word. The substance of the 
shoes is still no more than a hypothetical something 
supposed to somehow cause Motion. 

Driven from the sensory field, the effort to estab- 
lish an indisputable measure of Matter has resulted 
in the hypothesis that Matter is composed of minute 
particles of changeless substance called atoms. But 



THE LAST WORD Si 

even this cowardly substantive theory has been gen- 
erally untrenched. The atom is now held to be a 
centre of force, or a constellation of ions of electrical 
energy. And this merging of Matter into the second 
scientific Reality — Force or Energy — is seemingly 
upheld by recent studies and experiments. The 
Periodic Law of Atoms which expresses the fact that 
these imaginary elements of chemical combination 
form a series of regularly spaced gravitational en- 
ergy gradations, has been reinforced by the inten- 
tional discover}?- of several new elements properly 
fitting their prospective tabular weights. 

Also, there is convincing evidence that the atomic 
elements may be transmuted one into another by the 
application of heat energy. The spectra of the hot- 
test stars trace only hydrogen, helium and the light- 
est elements ; cooler stars are characterized by signs 
of nickel, iron and metals ; whilst the yet cooler earth 
exhibits carbon and organic units. 

The difficult problem of the maintenance of solar 
heat and light is now considered as solved by the 
energy given off in metachemical changes occurring 
between the elements on the sun's cooling surface and 
its photosphere. 

Finally, there are the recently famous laboratory 
experiments in the light energy of radio-activity and 
atomic evolution. 

Matter, up-to-date scientists would have us con- 
clude, is a condensed form of Energy. The Law of 
the Indestructibility of Matter merges into the Law 
of the Conservation of Energy. What, then, of the 
Reality of Energy? Did any one ever see Energy? 
Assuredly not. In the course of the Labor upon our 



m [THE LAST WORD 

exemplary shoes, we may have been informed that a 
cobbler expended one-man-power of energy in driv- 
ing in each sole peg. But had we been present at 
the operation, the only sensible reality observable 
would have been the fact that the man's arm made a 
motion causing a corresponding motion of the peg 
into the shoe sole. And the hypothetical Energy 
thus conserved in the peg can in no way become 
known except by way of further motion. We may 
pull out the peg, and in doing so will supposedly ex- 
ert a one-man-power equivalent to that of the shoe- 
maker. The supposed Potential Energy of the peg 
exactly cancels the supposed opposing energy of the 
pulling-out process, so that nothing actual is left 
but the movement of extraction. Modern science has, 
indeed, largely given up the primitive ideal of po- 
tency. The doctrine of the Equivalence of Energy, 
just illustrated, is virtually a cancellation of Energy 
by Energy. The mightiest Power, Gravitation, 
needed the falling of the apple for its demonstra- 
tion ; and gravitation has lately been artificially pro- 
duced by the vibratory movement of balls. This 
brings us to the third universal element. 

Is Motion really universal? The advanced view 
of this essay is based upon an emphatic affirmative 
answer. Motion is universal, and universal in the 
sense not only of being common to all scientific ex- 
perience, but as constituting the sole element there- 
of. All the minor sciences are affirming that Motion 
is ultimate. Heat, light, color, sound, growth, elec- 
tricity, gravitation, magnetism, radiation, sensation, 
nervation, etc., etc., are proved to be modes of Mo- 
tion. As Matter was reduced to condensed Energy, 



THE LAST WORD 3S 

so Energy is real only in the sense of condensed Mo- 
tion. The Law of the Conservation of Energy passes 
into the Law of the Continuity of Motion. 

Ether, to pass to the fourth scientific ultimate, is 
a real conception only as a hypothetical fluid sub- 
stance, that is, as a thinner and lighter variety of 
Matter ; whilst its very existence in supposition is by 
way of explaining Motional transmissions, such as 
light waves. 

Finally, Space and Time are realized only as at- 
tributes of Motion, that is, as jointly determined in 
Rate of Motion. 

The Universal Law of Inertia, long misunderstood, 
is now rationalized as a proof of the Universality of 
Motion. The impossibility of a finite perpetual mo- 
tion machine is proof of the infinite Perpetuity of 
Motion. What is both Universal and Perpetual is 
Infinite. We may now assert The Infinitude of 
Motion. 

This is so much "spiritual dynamite" wanting only 
translation from the artificially detached impersonal 
terminology of the minor scientist to the actually at- 
tached and personal language of the major Scientist 
or Philosopher proper, in order that it may shatter 
the debris of old fixational Ideas and reveal the pre- 
cious spring of the Water of Life. For Life is Mo- 
tion. 

Reality for every man is, of course, the reality ex- 
pressed in his own total consciousness. Man can 
realize only in a state of consciousness or mind proc- 
ess. When we conclude that Motion is All, we are 
doing no more than to state that all of our con- 
scious experience is motional. Thought-in-motion is 



34 THE LAST WORD 

Mentation. Hence the philosophical conclusion of 
science is: The Infinitude of Mentation. All is not 
Mind, representable by a fixed and perfected Ideal. 
All is Mentation, the essence of which is ceaseless 
ideation. 

In order to reassure himself of the conclusion al- 
ready reached — the allness of Motion, let the reader 
examine from the introspective standpoint the two 
major elements already disproved: Matter and En- 
ergy. He must not be led astray by a verbal appeal 
to the consciousness of Effort, Strength or Force. 
Our vocabulary is indeed rich in the symbolism of en- 
ergetic terms as it is rich in substantives, but these 
invariably are but shorthand for motional meanings. 
The rower says he put renewed force in the oar 
stroke. What he really means is that he moved his 
arm and the oar at an accelerated speed. Our sense 
of stress is real only as a sense of alternating move- 
ments. There is no such thing as a steady strain. 
Steadiness, Fixation or Idleness is the deadly enemy 
of Strength. Only "Going Strength" is real and 
valid. When we speak of an energetic man, we mean 
essentially a man of action. 

Matter is humanly inconceivable. The substance 
atom cannot be so small that we cannot conceive of 
its being split in twain, and if this halving process 
be continued we have the absurd idea of something 
continually growing constantly less and yet never by 
any possibility ceasing to be somewhat. 

Energy, as a mere potency apart from motion, is 
equally inconceivable. Only going force has mental 
definition. Of any other force we must assert the ab- 
surdity that it can go, but can't go. On the other 



THE LAST WORD 35 

hand, introspection reveals no state of consciousness 
in the sense of a static fixed condition of thought, but 
what has been well described as a flowing stream of 
consciousness. Thought is directly experienced as a 
motional process. An idea cannot be fixed in the 
mind. The same general idea may often and very 
rapidly recur, but this recurrence is a motional pro- 
cess. "Established" ideas are fixed only in an ap- 
proximate sense. We may keep the same name for 
them as we call one woman "mother" throughout our 
lives, but our actual consciousness of the mother is 
never constant as a definite idea. Only one thought 
can recur with perfect identity in the mind and that 
is the Idea of the Infinitude of Motion. 

The Last Word in Science is of revolutionary ef- 
fect in Psychology. As Matter is scientifically un- 
real, so its psychic analogues are invalidated. The 
whole hard-and-fast system of mental substantives, 
Sensations, Perceptions, Conceptions, Appercep- 
tions, are swept away. And, again, as Energy is 
disproved, so the potential psychics, Instinct, Will- 
power, Faculty, are invalidated. Psychology be- 
comes, in short, a universal science in which the only 
valid terms are continuously motional. Conscious- 
ness, thought, idea, volition, emotion, memory, are 
real only as active mentational processes governed by 
motional laws exclusively. 

Psychology as a minor science has already de- 
clared a relation of correspondence between brain and 
mind. This correspondence in so far as real is ac- 
tually based on mentational identification. It has 
been evidenced, also, that all experience comes di- 
rectly into consciousness as motion, — air vibration 



36 THE LAST WORD 

on the ear-drum yielding sound, light vibration on 
retina, color, etc. And this motion continues meas- 
urably as nervation within consciousness. The In- 
finitude of Mentation means the Continuity and Uni- 
versality of Consciousness. Dust, plant, protoplasm, 
animal, man, dust, — throughout the cycle, all are of 
kindred consciousness. This is not a fanciful dream, 
but the rational end of sober science. 

The essence of human life is shown to be no differ- 
ent from that of any other life ; and nothing is inani- 
mate. This scientific conclusion, it is worth noting, 
is in accordance with the natural judgment of the 
Child. The child conceives all things as endowed 
with Life and capable of movement. For it, there is 
no dead inanimate. And as civilized man in the pur- 
suit of Philosophy grows more familiar with his 
artificial environment, the same truth is more and 
more felt by him. The speeding locomotive and the 
6hip take on personality. The moving pictures 
fairly live. The moving needle of the phonograph 
reproduces the speaker's very soul. Our food stuffs 
we masticate with a new fraternal gluttony. 

In support of this view, which finds a vital one- 
ness in the natures of humans and non-humans, there 
is a growing tide of confirmation, as evidenced in the 
Continuity-of-Germ-Plasm Theory of Weissman, the 
Monism of Haeckel, the Brain-Sex Theory of Pat- 
ten, and general microcosmology. And those who re- 
ject these inductive theories as over-speculative and 
are prejudiced against even the evolutionary doctrine, 
may reach the same conclusion by a simpler deduc- 
tive process. The larger part of man's vital diet is 
actually inorganic, Moreover, the bulk of a man's 



THE LAST WORD 371 

body is not strictly human. Most of the glandular 
products, milk, digestive juices, nutritive products, 
outer skin, hair, nails, bones, excrements, blood 
plasma, gases, spinal fluid, water, mineral salts, etc., 
are not part of organic man. They may be replaced 
artificially by so-called inanimate or non-human mat- 
ters. They are as much non-human as if they existed 
outside the body. Also, there are within the body 
non-human lives, cancerous, bacterial, etc. More- 
over, whole limbs and special organs may be removed 
without danger to the essential human life. Were 
our surgery sufficiently acute, man might conceivably 
be reduced to the unicellular birth life from which 
physiologically he develops. The necessary conclu- 
sion is that the life of man, for all its seeming com- 
plexity, is in fundamental character no different from 
the simplest conceivable life. 

Nor does this conclusion represent a come-down in 
dignity from that unique transcendental conception 
— the human Soul. The Motional conception of the 
universe resolves both matter and spirit, body and 
soul, to a higher term. Motion is subtler than 
"spirit," which is conceivable only as thin matter — * 
ghost. Motion escapes all definition. It cannot be 
explained by the metaphysician or theologian, since 
to explain is to relate to something else ; and motion 
itself is All. It is the rational Absolute. Mentation 
is Mentation. 

At this point it may be objected that the particu- 
lar human consciousness in which alone we may know 
reality is not a sufficient basis for asserting a uni- 
versal truth. We can only know our finite selves. 
We may answer this objection practically by calling 



38 THE LAST WORD 

attention to the fact that we all do go outside of our 
own minds in asserting reality. Every man is per- 
fectly sure of the conscious reality of his fellow men, 
though he can by no means enter into their conscious 
life. The poet goes further and finds mind-life in 
animals, trees, etc. The scientist finds sound basis 
for belief in other mentations than his own from a 
comparison of the motional body changes in himself 
and others. The philosopher may add that, if he 
philosophize at all, he must take the speculative risk 
of assuming that other men and the world of nature 
have the same essentially conscious character as 
himself. 

But fortunately, the theoretical reply to the above 
objection is even stronger; is truly sufficient. For 
having logically identified his own mind with a mo- 
tional process, he has only to add the fact that mo- 
tion or mentation cannot rationally be conceived as 
self-originating or self-ending, in order to establish 
a conscious link between his own mentation and the 
world consciousness. His own mind is part of the 
world mind, a part not isolated but flowing in and 
out to identify itself with other minds. And the 
goal of this mind-motion is no less than a Unity of 
all things. 

We feel that nothing real is foreign or impossible 
to our mentational grasping. It is true that all past 
philosophies have rested on the assumption that the 
human mind is by nature of finite limits. But this 
assumption is false and absurd. What the mind nat- 
urally cannot conceive is exactly fixity or finity, — 
space with no more space extending beyond a bar- 
rier, cause without effect, etc., — what the human 



THE LAST WORD 39 

mind does naturally conceive is no less than infinity. 
Every particular thought is felt by us to have an in- 
finitely extensive and indefinite margin. Our notion 
of infinity is vague, undetailed and indefinite, because 
these are exactly the essential qualities of an infinity 
of eternal change. The Philosopher need not claim 
a definite conscious collection of all the facts in the 
universe as so many material nuggets. He does not 
aim at dead mass of knowledge. His motive and end 
are fundamentally satisfaction through a knowing 
process infinitely prolonged. It is the threatened 
cessation of this process, as will be shown later, 
which has given rise to organized scientific philoso- 
phizing. The mind is satisfied when every thought 
is experienced as a reality harmonizing in nature with 
the universe of real thoughts. And the nature of this 
reality is an unobstructed moving from premise to 
conclusion and from conclusion to premise. This 
harmonious sequence is realization and the basis of 
rationality. The necessary conclusion to which re- 
cent thinkers have been driven, namely, that of the 
Relativity of Knowledge, becomes in a purely mo- 
tional conception of the world a proof of the possi- 
bility of a complete Philosophy. For it will be shown 
in the next Section that all Reality is essentially 
composed of "selves in relation." All knowledge is 
relative, and all knowledge is related. 

All the objections to an intuitive realization of 
motion are invalidated when it becomes the all with- 
out the fixational qualifications of Substance and Po- 
tency. Thus the argument that Motion is an ab- 
surdity because at every instant of time the moving 



40 THE LAST WORD 

body must be somewhere and hence cannot be pass- 
ing to otherwhere, is falsely based upon the concep- 
tion of fixed points of Space and Time. Time is 
realized in our experience as a particular Present, but 
this Present is never a dead center. It is an indefinite 
freely progressive extension of the Past into the Fu- 
ture. A fixed point in Space is meaningless without 
reference to at least three other points and the 
tri-dimensional movement of the imagination. Or it 
may be said that a moving body cannot stop because 
at every instant of time it must be going at a certain 
rate and not a slower one. Here the quibble rests 
on the so-seeming material body which may, indeed, 
lose motion whilst the motion itself is provably con- 
tinuous. 

We live in a world of unceasing motion, and the 
only absurdity which shocks the normal mind is that 
of so-seeming non-motion or death. Universal Sci- 
ence or rational Mentation is the denial of Death. 

The desire for a harmonizing of all parts into a 
total Unity whether it be called: God, Substance, 
Morality, Nature, Life, Force, Law, Personality, 
Will, Polarity, Oversoul, or what not, is universal. 
Were this unity a unity of fixity, its attainment in 
thought would mean the end of the thinking process, 
complete satiety, ennui, death. The Last Word 
perpetuates the thought process. It identifies Sci- 
ence with immortal Life. With the ultimate Truth, 
Science throws off her rags of humility and takes on 
the robes of assured Philosophy. The formal bonds 
of the minor sciences, each representing a small foot- 
hold in the ascent of Generality, disappear in the ul- 



THE LAST WORD 41 

timate All-view. The diversity of pigments van- 
ishes ; the unity of the solved picture-puzzle remains. 
All is Life. And all Life is of the nature of the hu- 
man Consciousness. 



SECTION II. 

THE LAW OF MENTATION. 

Having established the allness of Life, there re- 
mains the necessity for determining the Law of Life. 
In identifying Infinite Mentation with Universal Mo- 
tion we have supplied the key to an exact knowledge 
of the modes of mentation. The laws of Motion are 
already partially known to scientists. But their tre- 
mendous significance for human life becomes appar- 
ent only when, as now, Motion itself is recognized 
as the sole Reality. 

All motions are known to be vibratory. In terms 
of Energy, particular Motions follow a vanishing 
vibratory line resulting from the opposition of forces. 
Dropping the obsolete terms of Energy, particular 
rhythms are self-defined as particular centers vibra- 
ting to and fro on each side of equilibrium. This 
alternation of £o-motion and fro-motion we may term 
ad-motion — £#-motion. 

The Periodic Law of Atoms (hypothetically a law 
of gravitational energy, but actually a law of Mo- 
tion since only in the motions of the scale-beam does 
the ascending series of weights become manifest) is 
now seen to be a true Rhythm. Supposed aggregates 
of atoms, molecules, organs, bodies, societies, worlds, 
etc., are all harmonized by similar periodic laws. 



.THE LAST WORD 43 

The to and fro of Centripetal — Centrifugal Force 
and Gravitation — Levitation Energy represents the 
crude attempt to vitalize the conception of Energy 
in this respect. 

Turning again to the personal basis of knowledge, 
we may translate admotion-exmotion as conscious 
admentation-exmentation. That is to affirm that our 
life is one of constant alternation between experience 
realized as coming motionally to us and as going mo- 
tionally from us. The "us" is an imaginary center 
of equilibrium and has no existence apart from these 
two alternating afferent and efferent currents. And 
just here lies the principal danger of misconception. 

The psychologist who shares the ordinary scien- 
tific view of matter believes that the soul or mind 
has a substantiality in itself quite apart from mo- 
tion. He, therefore, represents consciousness as al- 
ternating, if at all, by way of experience in-coming 
objectively from without the self and out-going sub- 
jectively from within the self. The distinction be- 
tween this inmotion-outmotion and admotion-exmo- 
tion is infinitely wide. The former conception in- 
volves us in the necessity of splitting reality into two 
or more different hinds. There is the motional re-, 
ality of the light wave of color ; there is the substan- 
tial reality of the eye and brain which it somehow 
affects ; there is the sensation of color resulting from 
a combination of those two realities ; and there is the 
self's, mind's, soul's, oversoul's, "pure reason's," and 
what-not's to-do with the sensation, perception, ap- 
perception, etc. According as one emphasizes the 
validity of the objective thing without himself, he is 
called a "realist," and as he emphasizes the self 



U THE LAST WORD 

within, he is an "idealist." And for all their battles, 
neither idealist nor realist can get along without the 
other. 

In the natural (child) consciousness there is no 
such ^/-consciousness. There is no gap between 
reality as it comes to us and goes from us, between 
the reality sensed and the sensing organism. The 
vibratory progress of the smoothly to and fro wav- 
ing line represents the natural consciousness. The 
real elementary distinction to be felt is between what 
are usually termed sensations on the one hand and 
volitions on the other, though we are as sensible of 
the volitions as of the sensations and the volitions are 
not actually experienced as functions of self-will- 
power any more than are the sensations. Men of 
marked "will power" are those who act as easily, as 
automatically, as they sense. It is true, of course, 
that a man's body represents something peculiarly 
himself. Yet this self is no less the related expres- 
sion of other selves or world consciousness than if it 
were indistinguishably joined to the world as an oak 
tree is rooted in the soil. And there is never felt in 
consciousness more of the body proper in exmotion 
than in admotion. These two regularly alternate in 
admentation-exmentation. 

As has already been pointed out, the human life is 
fundamentally identical with the smallest cell life, 
whose give and take drama is observably rhythmic. 
The admentation-exmentation, which is the charac- 
teristic of all lives, may be called, in the loose ter- 
minology of school psychology, a vibration between 
sensing and willing, or desiring and appropriating. 
But sensing must here mean more than the excitation 



THE LAST WORD 45 

of the "five senses." Recalling our analysis of organic 
man, in this broader use of the term "sensation" are 
included such strong desires as hunger and love, 
(about which our psychologists strangely have little 
or nothing to say), produced more by the admotive 
activity of internal secretions than external titilla- 
tions. The "willing," once more, is not more voli- 
tional than the sensing. And neither the "desiring" 
nor the "appropriating" refer to any "thing." They 
are the real "things" themselves. 

The human self is a particular center of conscious- 
ness vibrating between admentation and exmentation 
and moving from one vanishing point to another. 
This does not mean that when a man dies his life 
ends. It means simply that its motion passes into 
another life, possibly beyond earthly observance, just 
as the highest rhythms in atomic periodicity repre- 
sent elements missing on earth, but in other stars ap- 
pearing; or just as child-birth represents the con- 
tinuation of the parental life processes. As all is Life 
and Motion is Continuous, no life can vanish or be 
finite in the sense of passing into nothingness. The 
All Life must include and continue every particular 
life. 

We have concluded that Motion is continuous and 
universal. Theoretically, only revolving motion, — 
that is, motion which turns completely back upon 
itself, could be at once continuous and universal. In 
the trend of actual scientific investigation, the De- 
velopment Hypothesis has expanded into the Uni- 
versal Law of Evolution ; thence into the Law of Dis- 
solution; thence into the Law of the Equilibration 
of Evolution and Devolution. But the doctrine of 



46 THE LAST WORD 

ultimate equilibrium, in the sense of Cosmic Fixity, 
is contrary to the Universal Law of the Continuity 
of Motion and is rationally absurd. The equilibrium 
must, therefore, be a moving balance. Accordingly, 
these laws give place to the absolute Law of the 
(Evolution-Devolution) Revolution of Motion. 

In mode, Universal Motion is, then, like particular 
motion, rhythmic (continuously revolving) with the 
distinction that its Rhythm, being completely Revo- 
lutionary, is constantly and undiminishingly progres- 
sive. The vanishing vibrations of particular modes 
are continued and completed in the Rhythm of Uni- 
versal Motion. Reality is a universal rhythmic move- 
ment composing, and composed of, the sum of par- 
ticular movements. The relation in this composition 
may be seen in a single illustration. Standing on the 
shore of a pool, toss a pebble into the water. There 
results a series of rotating water particles, each of 
which vibrates diminishingly on each side of a sta- 
tionary center of equilibrium. And this series com- 
poses a series of rhythmic surface waves which carry 
the original motion of the stone back to the shore. 
This wave motion, assuming it to equal the stone 
throwing motion, is here typical of universal motion 
in its function of harmonizing balance. The admo- 
tion received by the particular pool center is ulti- 
mately returned in full as exmotion in accordance 
with the law of the Continuous Revolution of Uni- 
versal Motion. Universal Rhythm is the expression 
of a revolving balance harmonizing all particular vi- 
brations. Universal Time and Space are equilibrated 
in Eternity and Infinity by Universal Motion. The 
final generalization of Scientific Philosophy stands 



THE LAST WORD 47 

as: — The Law of Universal Continuous Motion Re- 
volving as a balance between (non-universal, non-con- 
tinuous) 'particular centers interchanging admotion- 
exmotion. 

The "interchange of admotion-exmotion" defines 
the direction of motion. Motion directed to one self 
center is admotion for it and, oppositely, is exmotion 
from other self centers. The self center is not a dead 
center. It has no reality in itself save as the mov- 
ing exchange point between the real admotion and ex- 
motion. 

The exact relation of particular motions one to 
another and the way in which each, though related 
to and composed by others, is yet unique, is shown in 
our pool-pebble illustration. The progressive wave 
rhythm which carries backward each phase of the 
forward vibrations of the water-air particles is de- 
fined by and yet is distinct from them. So, however 
complicated the stream of human consciousness may 
be, it follows the line of universal motion, acting as 
a mutual redirection or harmonization of body and 
environment motions. 

The internal sub-human centers of vibration are 
the so-called "sub-conscious" processes. Such men- 
tations are as real and independent as any other par- 
ticular modes. They simply lie outside the field of 
what is called human consciousness. The skin of 
man, in the course of evolution, has come through 
cross-breeding to hold a compound of many lives. 
Each human organ has its own private history, its 
own mode of rhythmic function, in short, its own 
consciousness. The essential organ of briefest life 
rhythm puts the period to man's life as a whole. 



48 ,THE LAST WORD 

Even after death many organs continue to function 
for hours. 

What we call the human consciousness is that mode 
of rhythmic mentation which harmonizes the sub- 
conscious centers of life with the super-conscious 
centers of life. 

As a function of motional adjustment, human con- 
sciousness is especially concerned when all the par- 
ticular human body organs act at once, since the re- 
sulting complexity is more liable to require harmon- 
ization. The two chief examples are the busyness of 
the nutrition of the whole body and sexual (whole 
body) reproduction. Hunger and love are, accord- 
ingly, the most vivid modes of mentation. With the 
metabolism of the separate organic cells, and in the 
reproductive growth of the special organs, human 
consciousness is, as naturally, unconcerned. These 
processes are least vivid, — sub-conscious, — sleep. 
Habit or instinct are henceforth to be interpreted as 
pure established rhythms needing no fresh redirec- 
tion. The Motional conception of the Universe gives 
for the first time a rational explanation of the mys- 
tery of reproductive generation or race rhythm. It 
also makes individual growth from the germ con- 
ceivable. (The reader interested in the occult side 
of psychology will find an application of the Law 
of Universal Mentation explanatory.) 

The full psychic translation of the Last Word 
follows: "The Law of Universal Continuous Motion 
Revolving as a Balance between particular centers 
interchanging admotion-exmotion" equals The Law 
of Universal Eternal Mentation infinitely mediating 



THE LAST WORD 49 

between mortal selves socializing admentation-exmen- 
tation. 

In this supremely generalized form, the Law de- 
mands for its appreciation a practical application. 
The remaining sections are designed to clarify the 
meaning of the Last Word by disclosing its relation 
to typical problems. The man in the street invokes 
"philosophy" always as a solace in misfortune. So 
we shall put true Philosophy (here obviously de- 
veloped into identity with Religion) to the solution 
of the greatest of human problems, — unhappiness, — 
as the surest means of discovering its value. 



SECTION III. 

THE LAST WORD IN RELIGION. 

The want of cosmic harmony in Metaphysics is 
Error; in Theology, Sin. But neither Untruth 
nor Evil have vital significance, except as they ef- 
fect human unhappiness. 

All historical religions have had, with the sense 
of something wrong about human motion, a common 
element of faith in the righting charity of a super- 
human Ideal. As the metaphysician has sought Se- 
curity from Chaos in abstract Fixity, so has the 
theologian sought Salvation from Sin in abstract 
Deity. This common element has been pointed out 
as the essence of Religion. In fact, it is the essence 
of irreligion. For, though Metaphyics and Theology 
have sought through Speculation and Superstition 
to draw on Cosmic Charity, — the true Philosophy 
and Religion of the people have always reached out 
by Science and Conscience toward Cosmic Conscious- 
ness. Historical religions have never failed to make 
an active demand upon human motion, though it were 
no more than the posture of prayer or the fancy of 
faith. And, as was shown in Preface, this demand 
upon the world righting by human movement has 
grown historically until, in the metaphysic of 
James, the fate of the cosmos depends dubiously 

50 



THE LAST WORD 51 

upon human pragmatism, whilst in the theology of 
Rogers, the human-self fronts the god-self in social 
equality. 

The Last Word in Science, the Truth of the Law 
of Universal and Eternal Mentation infinitely mediat- 
ing between mortal selves socializing admentation- 
exmentation, is proof positive and conclusive of the 
equal validity of man and God. It asserts the uni- 
verse to be eternally composed not of one life, but 
of lives; and it defines one of these lives as unique. 
The God-life and the man-life are akin in nature. 
Particular mentations and the universal mentation 
are alike rhythms interchanging social consciousness. 

God is unique only in his comprehensive relation- 
ship to finite selves. What the artistic meaning of 
the whole unified picture is to the meaning of the 
minor pigments which compose it, that, in terms of 
relation strictly, is God to man and other particu- 
lar selves. Man is a part of God and yet a separate 
self, just as the particular pigment is part of the 
unity of the picture and a separate thing-in-itself. 
In the objective description of science, God is re- 
lated to men approximately as the major rhythm of 
the wave is related to the minor vibrations of the 
water particles, the stationary phases of which com- 
pose its forward motion. 

This Motional conception of Universal Science ra- 
tionalizes the religious idea expressed by Professor 
Rogers. Universal and Eternal Consciousness is 
unique, absolute divinity. Here is no humiliation 
of God. Finite consciousness is akin to god-mind 
which it composes. Here is no humiliation of 
charity for man. Work (motional mentation) is the 



52 THE LAST WORD 

nature of self, and so in the "society of selves" is 
self-explanatory. The rationality of the selves-so- 
ciety is Continuity of Consciousness. God is not 
simply a sum of units — a deification of space and 
time inclusiveness. He is an expression of active 
harmonization, having a proper motion of his own. 
Science asserts the universe to be a society of con- 
scious selves whose consciousness is essentially an ex- 
pression of socialization, that is, mentational inter- 
change-between-selves. God is the Infinite Mediator 
in this interchange of Finite admentation-exmenta- 
tion. 

The only sin possible to a particular socializing 
self is the desire to hold back from socialization. In 
such a desire the Mediator cannot share. There- 
fore God is blameless for human Sin and its result- 
ing unhappiness. The human responsibility for sin 
is the subject of the next succeeding paragraphs. 

The so-seeming material body has been conceived 
to be constantly integrating and disintegrating, be- 
ing built up and torn down. In motional terms, it 
evolves and devolves, sucks in and sends out. This 
double process, termed the "whirl-swirl" by Upward, 
is, in reality, a single process. The evolution-devo- 
lution phases alternately succeed one another as ex- 
tremes of oscillation between admentation and ex- 
mentation, between desiring and appropriating. Each 
sensational or desiring impulse is followed by a cor- 
responding willing or appropriating pulsation. The 
cause of human unhappiness cannot really be desires 
that accumulate in consciousness to produce the mis- 
ery of want ; nor appropriations that succeed one an- 
other without relief to produce surfeiting. More- 



THE LAST WORD 5S 

over, the harmonious mediated adjustment of the 
life rhythm gives to the vital vibration a rate ensur- 
ing no such gap between desire and appropriation 
as Schopenhauer would have us believe to be the 
cause of a necessary want — ennui alternation. In 
the obvious activities of a child at play are demon- 
strated the continuous income of admentation and 
outgo of exmentation. This natural interchange 
puts the child in direct harmony with the universal 
rhythm. The child feels equal kinship with man 
and beast, earth and sky, the universe. The child's 
self-consciousness is a true world consciousness. 

Now, uneducated children and undomesticated ani- 
mals are never unhappy. The wounded animal uses 
excessive exmotion as an immediate antidote to ex- 
cessive admotion. If the wound is of a special organ, 
the animal lies quietly, turning the adjusting menta- 
tion into the ordinarily subconscious field, and there 
by so-called molecular motion producing narcotic 
and curative heat comfort. Intra-organic wounds 
are oppositely treated by conscious motion, the ex- 
hilaration of flight, the erethic intoxication of com- 
bat, or the convulsions which protect vital parts — 
the origin of human ticklishness and laughter. 
Death itself is met in "the rapture of the strife." 

No branch of metaphysical speculation has been 
more grossly in error than that which treats of sub- 
human psychology. Materialists can never satisfac- 
torily explain biological laws. They must admit that 
variations ( actually growth-motion products) are in- 
determinate by their standards; that teeth and fin- 
gers evolve before they have any use and disappear 
unless chance use preserves them. This being held so 



54 THE LAST WORD 

of the origin of the entire organism, it is little won- 
der that the life proper should fail in their view of 
any reasonable safeguard for happiness, and that 
they should have imputed to the lower animals and 
childhood itself the diseases from which they them- 
selves suffer. Fortunately, there is of late a grow- 
ing respect for the natural resources of the body to 
heal itself. It remains to be shown that the mind 
of man is also able to maintain its equilibrium when 
left to its normal self. This brings us to the sore 
spot in human psychology. 

Pain. What causes it? How can we be rid of 
it? In the last analysis, penetrating through all 
theological and metaphysical verbiage, mankind su- 
premely desires happiness, though that happiness 
be but "satisfaction." God and Truth are desired 
as blessings. The scientific philosopher no less than 
any other man seeks the ultimate generalization for 
happiness' sake. He seeks the complete harmoniza- 
tion of the universe because he feels himself to be in 
some degree at hurtful odds with the world as it is. 

In the many "shaky" philosophies of the present 
day we have marked a rising current of cheerfulness. 
These various systems, New Thought, Christian 
Science, Eugenics, New Theology, Emmanuel Move- 
ment, etc., show a temperamental tendency toward 
a practically pure optimism. Evils of all sorts are 
considered unreal or at worst but passing shadows — ■ 
absences of light. In this tendency to minimize the 
painful elements in human psychology, there is a 
real danger. Civilizations go down to ruin in hys- 
terical laughter. 

Philosophically, there is but one evil, Untruth, Ir- 



THE LAST WORD 55 

rationality or abstracted Idealization. Mentation 
being infinite, Evil is a Living Lie. The generaliza- 
tions of the minor sciences have notoriously failed 
to discover and remedy unhappiness. On the other 
hand, the normal child is happy without knowledge 
of these minor sciences. But the child, we insist, 
does live in a natural harmony with the ultimate 
generalization of universal science. Its life nor- 
mally blends with the universal life as a part of the 
rational Realization of the Continuity of Mentation. 
And wherever we turn toward happiness, there does 
boundless Motion stand forth as an evident Reality. 
It is so in the myths of the bygone golden ages 
wherein the heroes and gods loved and warred as 
unrestrained as the wild winds. It is so in the pic- 
tured heavens to come of childlike peoples, — the In- 
dians' Happy Hunting Ground. 

As the smallest single discord invalidates the har- 
mony of many parts, so does science utterly fail of 
of her vital use and wisdom until the highest gen- 
eralization is realized. Mere facts and the lumber of 
learning avail no more for happiness than unhappi- 
ness. The whole history of scientific thought is one 
long struggle to regain tuitionally what the child- 
man once experienced intuitionally. The general 
trend of that struggle has already been traced with 
the result that the pessimistic Ideal of Fixity pre- 
vailing at the outset has been seen to wane to half 
whilst the pseudo-Idea of ameliorative Motion in- 
versely rises to meet it. In its purity the Living 
Lie is the all-pessimistic negation of the Truth, — the 
Law of the Universality of Continuous Rhythmic 
Mentation. 



56 [THE LAST WORD 

Now, the Lie cannot invalidate a Universal Truth. 
Nor can it exist in the place of a particular truth, 
since all particular truths are included in the high- 
est Generalization of Science. A lie cannot be es- 
sentially Real. When we speak of the "Living 
lie," we mean that the lie, in its living, is itself an 
active proof and part of the Law of the Universality 
and Immortality of Living. This is not paradoxical. 
For the living lie is to be understood both as an 
Idea and an Ideal. The lie is real as an existing word 
or formula of words ; and at the same time unreal 
as a symbol of something that is non-existing and 
untrue. The abstract Ideal, as opposed to the gen- 
eral Idea, cannot be defined in any terms save those 
which negate Reality. The origin of this peculiar 
negative power of words will be explained later. 

The Ideal of Fixtfcy is the living lie which negates 
the Idea of Motion. The Ideal Fixity as a word 
Idea has motional value just as any word Idea has 
motional value. The mere uttering or hearing of a 
word is a conscious activity or mentation. The 
meaning of a word, its symbolism, is also motional. 
Cry "Excelsior," the lungs expand; say "pickle," 
the salivary glands contract. "Fixity" idealized is a 
word of exclusively motional meaning since its only 
reality depends upon the validity of motion. 

Materialistic metaphysics has asserted that man's 
superiority over the lower animals lies in his pe- 
culiar power to inhibit motion. There is no proof 
whatever that man is vitally superior to the lower 
animals ; and motion cannot be inhibited in the sense 
of being stopped. Particular motions being centers 
of admotion-exmotion, every oscillation upon one 



THE LAST WORD 57 

side of equilibrium must be followed by a correspond- 
ing opposite. Inhibition of universal continuous mo- 
tion can only mean redirection of motion. And the 
lower animals, if there be a difference, are more apt 
in this "inhibition" than the civilized human. In 
active perseverance and waiting patience they are 
unrivaled. We have already spoken of one example 
of such obvious redirection of motion in the case 
where the internally hurt animal retires and lies out- 
wardly quiet whilst the exmotive current is directed 
bodily inwards. The external taking on of fat, 
thickening of fur, etc., against the cold of the win- 
ter seasons, is obvious redirection of exmotion. The 
exmotion leaves consciousness but not the body en- 
velope. 

It is well, here, perhaps to remind the reader that 
the harmonizing redirection-of-motion is exactly the 
whole rational reality of the individual conscious- 
ness, human or otherwise. Man, by reason of his 
great skull capacity, is capable of directing exmo- 
tion into brain action and so producing a seeming 
inhibition. But the memory of man is thus built out 
as fat is built up, exmotively. The brain is an abor- 
tive sex-organ, that is, one of reproductive or ex- 
motive function. A highly developed upper brain 
above the spinal cord is not a whit more vital to hap- 
piness than superfat on the muscle fibre. The lean 
learned metaphysician has nothing over the plump 
playful kitten. The worship of brain substance and 
weight belongs with the soon-to-be obsolete material 
and potential psychologies. 

When the Idealist's motional Word "Fixity" en- 
counters admentation in his consciousness, if the lat- 



5& THE LAST WORD 

ter be of small momentum, the result is brain action, 
ideation. If the opposed incoming current be more 
vigorous, it will back up from the restraining nega- 
tive Idea into the lower centers of ordinary exmo- 
tion and there disorganize or rend apart the sub- 
organs, converting their molar motion into con- 
densed, molecular, atomic, subatomic, motion. In 
this state the heart labors excitedly but the blood 
which would ordinarily expend itself in the arterial 
feeding of moving limbs is choked and clogged until 
it reddens the very skin in its effort to escape. The 
conscious result is the e-motion of popular psychol- 
ogy. If the incoming admotion be of yet greater 
momentum and the motional word idea still restrains 
with equal momentum, the former will be vibrated 
back even to the normal sensory routes. The eye, 
then, sees red; the ear roars; the mouth turns bit- 
ter ; the stomach is nauseated. 

Each such supremely violent alteration in the di- 
rection of the admentation-exmentation of conscious- 
ness destroys sensing organism, sensitiveness, and 
hence indirectly diminishes succeeding admentation. 
A continuation of such a practice inevitably shortens 
the life period. It is as much suicidal as if the in- 
ward redirection were in the shape of a pistol bullet. 

And yet it must be clearly realized that this self- 
destructive process is not in itself the source of un- 
happiness. What we call the normal in animal life 
is simply the average consciousness, wherein the di- 
rection of the admotion-exmotion is simple and ha- 
bitually regular. But in the lives of all natural and 
happy beings come crises where the adjustment of 
the internal organization with a novel feature of 



THE LAST WORD 59 

environment demands some such violent self-destruc- 
tion as the foregoing. The fleeing animal brought 
suddenly to bay in the snare is inwardly wrought 
upon by the momentum of its own flight. And where 
the same animal often experiences such emotion its 
flight centers are by repeated devolutionary processes 
so reduced that abrupt stoppage becomes finally un- 
emotional. In short, so-called inhibition and all its 
effects even to the extremest degree are perfectly 
natural and in no wise productive of unhappiness. 

The source of human grief does not lie in the 
Ideal of Fixity, as a word Idea, nor in any of its 
consequences as such. The inhibitive processes 
which such an idea sets in motion are as natural as 
those of any otner valuable inhibitive words such as 
"Stop, Look, Listen." Unhappiness springs solely 
from the disagreement of the Ideal as such, that is, 
from the desire of Fixity. For the greater the in- 
hibitive restraint upon admotion, the more violent is 
the vibrational rebound. The more Fixity is ideal- 
ized, the more Motion is realized. In this way, the 
current of consciousness is mentationally split asun- 
der and pain enters in. 

The Last Word gives a totally new conception of 
Pain. Pain is not a matter nor an energy. It does 
not derive from any physical causes. Unhappiness 
may exist in what the physiculturist pronounces the 
most highly perfected body, and it may be absent 
in the most diseased body. There is but one Pain, 
and that is felt in the Act of denying the ultimate 
Truth. Unhappiness is real only as the idealized 
or principled negation of happiness, — as its source, 
the Lie is real only as the negation of the Truth. 



60 [THE LAST WORD 

Whoever denies the Universality of Life creates with- 
in himself a mortal Death. 

When any form of Fixation is idealized, the ac- 
companying unhappiness may be properly named 
Passion. Passion aims at a state of Passivity, and 
realizes instead a process of suffering (Patior). To 
distinguish natural emotion from unnatural passion, 
consider one general passion — fear. It has been 
said by one of our epigrammatic philosophers that 
we do not run away because we fear; we fear be- 
cause we run away. If there were any truth in this, 
the fear and the motion of running away would be 
identical processes. In fact, however, because run- 
ning away is usually principled motion, it would pre- 
vent fear. We fear only so long as we do not run 
away from the normally fearful object but, re- 
strained by a negative Ideal, passively absorb its 
abhorrent admotive influence. We impute fear to 
the palpitant deer brought to bay, whereas at ex- 
actly such a moment, thrilling with the emotional 
intoxication of flight and unconscious of wounds, it 
is ready to gallantly charge its enemies, reckless of 
odds, and with but the one idea in its head — that of 
maximum exmotion. 

To find the beginning of a belief in valid Death, 
the race rhythm must be traced back to the ape- 
man who antedates history. For though the present 
savage races are analogous to the childhood of civil- 
ized man, that childhood is a sophisticated and un- 
happy one. The natural or unspoiled child is the 
post-type of the highest of the lower animals evolved 
beyond the Missing Link. In what vital respect does 
modern man differ from the lower animals ? 



L THE LAST L WORD 61 

Man has been called the cooking, the tool-using, 
the reasoning, the willing and the talking animal. 
None of these distinctions are absolute. Lower ani- 
mals artificially prepare food for digestion; use 
stone tools to crack nuts ; reason as certainly as 
they think, for all thinking is rational; will as cer- 
tainly as they reason, for all reasoning is attentively 
motivated ; and they converse by vocal sounds. The 
absolute distinction of man among earthly creatures 
is his ability to record his experience, that is, to 
fixate his motivity. This was done originally by 
verbal formulae, sagas, folk-songs, etc. ; later, by 
written formulae. It is principally to this ability that 
man owes his physical supremacy over the lower ani- 
mals. 

Physically, man is not strikingly superior in the 
animal kingdom. He rules through the pen rather 
than the sword; and the modern sword is itself the 
product of the inventive pen. Man's inherent rea- 
soning powers are not greatly superior to those of 
many lower animals. It is the series of recorded 
verbal syllogisms which enables him to ascend to 
"abstract ideas." By the verbal message and writ- 
ten record, he can communicate with his fellows at a 
distance and secure their cooperation ; and, most sig- 
nificant, he can hand down to posterity an accumula- 
tion of economic ideas which offsets the waning nat- 
ural resources of environment. It is the abuse of 
this supremely vital blessing which now yields the 
supremely lethal curse — unhappiness. 

The manner of this abuse may be simply illus- 
trated. An aboriginal woman discovers or invents 
a moccasin. She finds that it promotes human mo- 



62 THE LAST WORD 

tion — locomotion. She tells her neighbor the for- 
mula for moccasin making. The story spreads in 
the form of a fixed receipt, such as the cake receipt 
housewives tell to friends and hand down to daugh- 
ters. The shoe formula becomes popular, a custom, 
a lesson to the young. Writing gives it greater 
fixity and spread. And so far, no harm is neces- 
sarily done. 

But now enter in the aboriginal metaphysicians 
and theologians and proceed to idealize the formula. 
These men are the witch-doctors and oraculists who 
pretend to enunciate superhuman truths. The 
"good" of the moccasin formula, which is a limited 
and temporary adjective, they add to other "goods" 
in their universal and eternal scheme of things. Be- 
ing specially unequal to the harmonization of the 
motion in the world, they give these goods the na- 
ture of fixation outside the realm of changing re- 
ality. The original shoe-quality "good" is by them 
turned into a substantive "goodness," that is, a sub- 
stantial, changeless, perfected, fixed "good." Thus 
the moccasin formula is joined as Good-ness with 
such other similarly fixed idealizations as Just-ice, 
Beau-ty and Vir-tue. As a part of universal Truth, 
it wins the allegiance of the normal man unaccus- 
tomed to defining his intuitions, and at the same 
time intuitively true to all Universal Truth as such. 
From being, at worst, a social fad, the formula now 
becomes a sumptuary law passed by a king whose 
"divine right" his theologians uphold. 

As the formula spreads to other peoples and as 
the descendants of the aborigine evolve into mod- 
erns, priests worship fragments of the original shoe, 



THE LAST WORD 63 

and make the inventress a saint. As no two feet and 
no two environments are exactly alike, so no two 
shoes, and so no two adjective "goods" are really 
the same. But the same word and formula are used 
continuosly. The moccasin becomes unfit for later 
conditions. Yet the authority of philosophers, 
priests, pedagogues, politicians, poets, continues to 
uphold it. Though become admittedly painful, they 
say, wear it because it is "Goodness" and "Truth." 
To the shoe-pinch is added now the soul-pinch, the 
passion of unhappiness. If a modern seeks a better 
shoe formula, or offers to change the old, the meta- 
physicians and theologians cry, "hands off," or our 
whole set of ideals is destroyed. Who disputes the 
formula — now become a law, a dogma, a creed — is 
heretic, vandal, criminal. 

So the women of China continue to let their feet 
be bound according to precedent, though they can no 
longer walk on them. So the American woman is re- 
ligiously bound by the recorded dictates of the fash- 
ion paper from Paris ; and would nearly as soon vio- 
late sex as go abroad in pantaloons. So the hopeful 
imitativeness and cooperation of the monkey-man be- 
comes glorified and fixed in the Homo Sapiens as a 
Principle of Passivity. 

Is, then, the enormous tragedy of human misery 
the effect of a mere play upon words? In reply to 
this question, it is not enough to point out the 
tragedies of murder springing from the epithet 
"Liar !" and no matter of moment besides ; or to in- 
stance the duels, feuds and wars which the bare verb- 
iage of an empty boast, a sentiment of "honor" or 
a sophistical oration have effected. The hurtful 



64 THE LAST WORD 

play is not upon words merely. The Curse is the 
play upon Truth through the prostitution of mo- 
tional proper verbs to substantive "common" nouns. 
It is the prostitution of language from a means of 
active collaboration and education to a symbol of 
passive dependence and slavery. It is significant 
that the most advanced intuitional book of our day 
— "The New Word," by Upward — is the writing of 
a philologist. Whoever would appreciate the deadly 
power of "Andronican words," learn how "Repeti- 
tion is the secret of all enchantment," and realize 
how soundly our civilization is yet lulled to sleep by 
the language yoke of Caesar and Gregory, — would do 
well to consult that book. 

The metaphysical method has been defined as an 
appeal from Human Fixity to Superhuman Charity. 
Philosophers generally attribute the origin of re- 
ligion to fear — a fear of superhuman animates, 
ghosts or gods. This is an empirical deduction based 
on observation of present-day savage religions. But 
the religion of observable savages is not true religion. 
It is cosmic passion. Moreover, such a deduction 
follows the emotional fallacy already pointed out. 
Fear is not a natural quality. It is the result of an 
idealization of Untruth. The lower animals are not 
religious in the sense that savages are religious, nor 
are these animals fearful. How, then, came humans 
to fear? The true origin of theological and meta- 
physical misery is involved in the problem of the 
origin of the so-called objects of passion — the belief 
in superhuman gods or principles. 

Primarily, these superhumanities were not feared; 
they were trusted. Superhuman Charity is the 



■THE LAST WORD 63 

Curse in the guise of the Blessing. Dogma is the 
Charity of free thought ; slavery the charity of free 
labor ; and the primal philosopher was their prostitu- 
tional go-between. The earliest fruit of human co- 
operation was the division of labor, roughly, into sex 
service (muscular in man, maternal in woman) and 
brain (enclosed abortional counter-sex) service 
(governmental in man, artistic in woman). In early 
competition the societies survived which pushed this 
division furthest. The emergence of primitive man 
from beasthood was rapid. The mating of an ape of 
phenomenally vigorous brain expansion and one of 
phenomenally vigorous skull expansion. Result, — a 
monstrous child of brain capable of holding any 
amount of verbiage ; a leap over the Missing Link ; a 
small sociality of vastly superior powers based on 
language communication; a plethora of unlettered 
captives of war; a surplus of human table meat; di- 
vision of labor, enforced servitude of handmaidens 
and foot-soldiers ; by them, still more serving sur- 
plus ; advanced servitude of barbarian sub-governors 
and sub-artists ; master class indoctrinating serving 
class with Loyal-ty; balance of power between cap- 
tor and captive classes; serving class indoctrinating 
master class with Royal-ty; double voluntary sla- 
very. 

In this communistic process, it will be observed 
that the original society does not survive as an 
hereditary unit. The enforced division of labor con- 
stantly operates to specialize its individuals and so 
make them more socially dependent. The slave 
works with hands and feet; his eyes and brain are 
enforced to idleness, — emotionally devolved. Equally, 



66 THE LAST WORD 

the hands and feet of the master and overseer are 
emotionally devolved by the service of handmaidens 
and foot-soldiers. Continually the ruling and serv- 
ing classes become more interdependent; and at the 
same time the serving becomes relatively more power- 
ful than the governing class through an acquired edu- 
cation in its language joined with a comparatively 
greater approximation to the normal environing 
subsociality. At every disturbance of the social unit, 
the serving class is augmented and liberated by amal- 
gamation with fraternal fresh-blooded barbarians. 
The master is overthrown; the slave rules. All of 
this may be unlike the evolution and devolution of 
lower animal groups only in degree. The degree of 
difference is due to legitimate language development. 
The illegitimate use of language originated in the 
legitimate desire to cooperate. Civilization, as above 
described, ceaselessly rises and falls. There is a con- 
stant vibration between devolution of ruler and evo- 
lution of ruled. The individual life being absorbed 
in social activities, takes on habitually social terms 
of expression. Self-preservation becomes real as so- 
cial preservation. Civilness, the generalization of 
civilization, is a natural generality of legitimate civil 
intercourse in opposition to the ceaseless human mo- 
tion of unsocializing revolution. It becomes ideal- 
ized as Civil-ity ( Loyal- ty plus Royal-ty) when, by 
verbal exaggeration the disproof of which is actually 
difficult for the individual barbarian, a supersocial 
Idea is substituted for purely social intercourse in 
active civilization ; when known kings and priests, al- 
ready subordinated to knowable yet individually un- 
known Emperor and Pope, are yet further subordi- 



L THE LAST WORD 67 

nated to an unknown and actually unknowable Gov- 
ernor (Law-giver) and Artist (Creator). 

The legitimate motive for such primitive deception 
is identical with the instinctive ruse practised by all 
creatures. The nature of this ruse, as exhibited, for 
example, in the protective coloring of animals, is not 
denial of Truth, but harmonization of environmental 
admotion with organic exmotion. When this natural 
deception has become fixed self-deception through 
repetition (verbal education and communication), 
then the passion, Pity, attacks the Ruler and Fear 
consumes the Ruled. 

So the Lie originated in the darkness before the 
dawn of History. The biblical symbolism of the 
Fall is strictly accurate. The knowledge of Good 
and Evil which tempted to sin can only mean a 
knowledge of the negative of Good (Evil) added to 
the already known Good. The Serpent tempting to 
wisdom was accurately the wise-man serving the 
ruler, and later the demagogue serving the ruled. 

And historically the remedial suicide of the Liar 
has been indefinitely postponed, by fresh accessions 
of serfs and a forward move of the margin of ideali- 
zation, until the present day. The Lie of Fixity has 
endured by virtue of a never-ceasing stream of Liars. 
To-day, at last, that barbarian stream is running 
dry. The negro, most inferior of races, is exalted 
in busyness to a competitive level with the white, 
most superior of races. The westward "march" of 
civilization, leaving its stumbling track of ruins, has 
circled the globe. America has, on the one hand, 
drained Europe for the immigrant serf stufE with 
which to feed her "free institutions"; and America, 



68 THE LAST WORD 

on the other hand, finds herself withal not superior 
to the Oriental millions. Civilization based upon 
servility draws to its last Fall. The hope is the 
last Word of that Science which has stumbled often 
enough in its way, but which has nevertheless always 
made toward the goal of Universal Truth. 

Cosmic Charity, as a principle, seeks admentation 
without exmentation, Something for Nothing, Cheap- 
ness raised to the last degree or Value totally invali- 
dated. The doctrine of superhuman charity is the 
full defiance of the universal law of continuous men- 
tation, of cause-and-effect. 

The ultimate Generalization gives authority to 
deal with all particulars. With the reactive evils of 
Dogma and Slavery in the crude forms of doctrin- 
aire preachment and physical servility, men have 
lately become impressed. But there remain innum- 
erable subtler idealities under the general Charitable 
Principle, such as Vicarious Atonement, Protective 
Tariff, Freedom of Will, which are not even recog- 
nized as having such a relationship. With these par- 
ticulars, later sections of this essay treat. 

So far, the announcement of the Truth of truths 
and the diagnosis of the human sickness. It now 
remains to briefly define the method of remedy. Nat- 
tural and unnatural are terms herein applied to con- 
sciousness. The unnatural is a product of sociali- 
zation. It is not a producer of socialization. It 
produces only civilization. Every civilization has 
fallen hitherto from desocialization. And desociali- 
zation is the product of the artifice of fixational 
Ideality. 

The will to natural mentation is not a prehistoric 



THE LAST WORD 69! 

instinct which avails only in a simple unsocial ape 
life. Just as the natural mentation avails in our il- 
lustration to produce the first pair of serviceable 
moccasins, so it can avail to carry forward the high- 
est complexity of shoe manufacture. The Motional 
Idea which has evolved man from protoplasm will 
evolve him yet farther, and later devolve him without 
suffering as the earth cools and environmental mo- 
mentum wanes. 

The cure of unhappiness in Modern Man is the 
Ultimate of Universal Science. For Science alone is 
all-sufficient. The Universal Law of the Continuity 
of Mentation, etc., is the complete and continuous 
satisfaction of Science. He who achieves it becomes 
wholly optimistic in actuality. Whoever holds an 
Ideal beyond true philosophical Science is at best a 
meliorist in temperament. 

As physical accident may devolve muscular cells 
in emotion, so an absurdity in deduction may devolve 
brain cells. But in neither case is passion felt unless 
the individual has idealized Work or Logic, respect- 
ively. 

The application of the Truth is plain. We may 
choose only between factual Motion with hap-piness 
and fanciful Fixation with pas-sion. We must ideal- 
ize the Idea. To be happy we need only choose the 
deed. This does not mean that a manifest muscular 
deed must follow every stimulus. We are not to 
become jumping- jacks. The exmentational deed 
may be one of reminiscent cogitation, but it must 
aim only to forward harmonious admentation-ex- 
mentation. 

The Law of Life does not yield a formula which 



70 THE LAST WORD 

may be followed without full organic busyness. Such 
a formula is exactly what the alluring Ideal of Su- 
perhuman Charity purports to give. What the Idea 
does is ultimately to call into action the fullest vi- 
tality which is consistent with happiness and direct 
it in harmony with the universal life. For every or- 
ganism, there is a particular mode <2»f vibration, just 
as there is a particular rate of speed inherent in the 
individual motor car. It is only necessary to be rid 
of the network of negations upon principle to expe- 
rience the "sweet-running," self-directing current of 
the natural will. 

The Idea frees all activity from suffering. It re- 
stores suffering to its original pure meaning — sub- 
fero — to bear burdens. The pain-killing power of a 
controlling motional Idea is many times instanced 
in history. Martyrs of natural intuition, forerun- 
ning Science, have died for a philosophical or re- 
ligious truth, chanting songs of ecstatic joy whilst 
undergoing the most horrible tortures. Properly 
speaking, the human organism is insensible to pain. 
The more sensitive organs record modes of motion 
varying in degree but of one fundamental nature. 
Without the restraint of artificial passion, all ab- 
normal admentation is balanced instantly by in- 
creased exmentation, and passes at once from the 
body emotionally. Emotion in the form of war 
dances and religious chants among savages, in the 
form of pioneering and record-breaking among men 
of business, produces an ecstasy which obliterates 
even mortal wounds. 

It is the passions, Fear and Pity (prostituted Hate 
and Love), and their brood — Shame, Jealousy, Spite ? 



THE LAST WORD 71 

Anger, Lust, Regret, Eirv^, and the like, which solely 
produce conscious pain and all insufferable miseries. 
If faith in minor truths has, in the past, enabled 
martyrs, sacred and secular, to endure body tor- 
ments in soul gladness, how much more certainly 
must the exact knowledge of the validit} 7 " of the final 
conclusion of science, the Ultimate Truth, free hu- 
manity from woe. Who shall any longer fear death, 
knowing of a certainty that death is but a natural 
rebirth — a passing not into restful sleep, but into a 
new and harmonious mode of mentation, and that 
both of these phases compose with other lives a 
Life that is Universal and Immortal? Who, fearless 
of Death, shall be abashed by lesser ills? 

We are enmeshed in a civilization that is saturated 
with the fixational idealities. Stub a toe, and in 
flock the pitiers, doctor and priest, to curb the ex- 
motive kicking and cursing which would have natur- 
ally headed off and eased away pain. Most trage- 
dies, personal, domestic and social, originate in 
smaller ills than a stubbed toe, — compared with 
which, indeed, the body pain of dying is not so great. 
In such a society, it is difficult to conceive of perfect 
freedom of Human Movement based upon Law. But 
Science will have her way. 

The ultimate Momentum of the Idea of Life as op- 
posed to that of the Ideal of Death is as infinity to 
nothing. The Ideal of Fixation is pure Monomania. 
The monomaniac is the holder of a fixed ideal ab- 
stracted from reality. When it comes to the test, 
he cannot ultimately survive the sane holder of the 
Idea. The Man of Bus} r ness is master of our future, 
and his mastery is a relation of kinship with the 



72 THE LAST WORD 

Eternal. Man will seek to loose his life that he may 
not lose it. He will experience peace in Gain and 
good will in loss, by virtue of a perfected, assured, 
actual, comprehensive Religion. 

Unspoiled children and the lower animals are 
purely religious and happy. They realize God and 
good in every action. They accept life for life's 
sake. They ask no superhuman Charity. Occasion- 
ally a childlike adult of pure unsophisticated con- 
science penetrates the rind of fixational materialism 
to the heart of life. Then we have a true Messiah ; 
but his preachment is of small benefit, since he must 
speak the common Andronican language. His words 
are not understood. He is urged to make laws and 
life-negations. He is driven to paradox, hyperbole 
and miracle. 

Contrary to general opinion, it is true that sav- 
ages are little impressed by civilized miracles. Chil- 
dren are not credulous. They are incredulous, curi- 
ous, analytical, eager to test by action. They are 
unsuperstitious. They are perfectly fearless until 
corrupted by suggestion. The child of six asks 
realistic questions for which the churchman has no 
answer. On the other hand, to the civilized mob the 
miraculous is inherently better than the natural. 
They are offended if God be spoken of as a real 
person. They are convinced that "nothing can be 
both Good and Actual." To them an Immaculate 
Conception is nobler than human Fatherhood; Res- 
urrection, — the familiar trick of the East Indian 
fakir, — even though it invalidates the Sacrifice, is 
preferable to genuine Death for Love. 



THE LAST WORD 73 

The Vicarious Atonement is the sublimified doc- 
trine of theistic Charity. 

The Man of Business refuses to credit a God who 
forbids man to bargain with the Evil Spirit for 
Pleasure, Wisdom and Power, and then offers these 
same things by white magic without suffering so 
much honest payment as a bleeding of human veins 
for a drop of blood to sign the bond; or the 
Righteous Judge who, for an inevitable repentance, 
breaks all his own laws and the human law of cause 
and effect, pardoning the criminal and assuming the 
wages of another's sin; or the Abba Father whose 
charity is the old-fashioned pauperizing Charity of 
Cure; who disdains the Charity of Prevention, let- 
ting the world plunge into woeful torments, while 
accepting the unavailing sacrifices of the only sin- 
less creatures, until only a Drowning Deluge can 
cleanse; who then mercifully saves out in a Noah 
the seed of sin to repeople the earth with sinners 
until again it is necessary to slay — this time, the 
guiltless Son; or the creative Workman who pro- 
nounced his handiwork "good," and then shortly 
found it so bad that it must be practically 
"scrapped" ; or the Bargainer who offers two earthly 
covenants to humanity — with heaven thrown in — 
and yet is so poor a business Man that though he 
nails his First-born upon the Cross as advertise- 
ment and calls in all priests as auctioneers, he can 
close a deal with but a handful of his own creatures 
f — selfish, miserable worms, at that! 

And by the same tokens the Man of Business is 
coming to a higher appreciation of the busyness of 
iJesus of Nazareth. The early Christ of the conn- 



74 THE LAST WORD 

trjside was a preacher — a man of mystical, meaning- 
ful preachment, since all intuitive sayings are 
aborted in our substantive verbiage. In the Para- 
dise of Galilee was preached the Utopia of Love — ■ 
the creed, word for word, of all ingenuous pagan 
saints and heathen saviors. But later, when the 
Rabbi came to critical Jerusalem and learned to his 
despair that the world was not to be reformed in a 
day — that the kingdom must be deferred until a 
second coming, — then that prescience of the Uni- 
versality and Eternity of Life that has fixed his 
name in history, not as a preacher, but as a prac- 
tiser, becomes manifest in the universal language — 
Deed. Then he seeks no charity of his persecutors. 
He seeks no charity of God. He does not turn the 
cup of vinegar into wine. He does not "come down" 
from the cross. He is economically sound. He 
pays the full price so that when his day's work is 
done it is given him to say with every good work- 
man : "It is finished" ; not I am finished." The form 
passes ; the life proceeds ; the books are closed ; ac- 
counts balance; credit is good; and the Business 
goes on. 

The essential nature of Jesus is the child nature. 
His most unique act is that reverencing children as 
the already perfected subjects of the Kingdom of 
Heaven. It is singular to reflect that the Christian 
religion in the hands of adults has been a most po- 
tent factor in the abortion of the natural child will, 
and a chief source of adolescent misery. 

What of the Church? It is doubly cursed by 
Charity. Its spiritual prayers are pitiful beggary 
for bare existence. Materially, its expensive build- 



THE LAST WORD 75 

ings and expensive services — what, with the hired 
singer, instrumentalist, "surprise" and refined mono- 
logue, is little more than low-grade vaudeville enter- 
tainment — have alienated the working masses. The 
pulpit is enslaved by the hand that feeds it. The 
big money thieves and oppressors are pious church- 
men. Only the passive doctrines can safely emanate 
from such an institution. And already the suicidal 
effect of the passions is felt. The church body is 
internally burnt out. Hell-Fear and Crucifix-Pity 
have done their devolutionary worst. Even transient 
Revivalism is becoming impossible. 

The Church of Universal Science offers an im- 
perishable, all-sufficient Gospel of present Realiza- 
tion. Its Motionality is the cure for Temptation, 
Sin and Sorrow. Its Prayer is Communion in Serv- 
ice without servility. Its Cathedral is Everywhere. 
Its Ritual in Unrestriction. Its Commandments are, 
Thou shalts. Its Priest is Con-science. Its So- 
ciality is open to every Being. 



SECTION IV. 

THE LAST WORD IN GOVERNMENT. 

The ultimate scientific generalization defines the 
human consciousness as the admentation-exmentation 
vibration which acts as a moving balance between the 
subconscious and the superconscious rhythms. The 
function of a valid or vital government is, accord- 
ingly, that of a moving balance betwixt society and 
social environment. With the harmonizing of its 
internal or individual units, one with another, gov- 
ernment is not properly concerned. So far from be- 
ing the end of government, a perfected democracy is 
but the foundation for the equating of communal and 
natural movements. The Constitution of the United 
States recognizes this governmental viewpoint far 
more clearly than is generally supposed. Says a 
contemporary university president: "The fundamen- 
tal division of powers in the Constitution of the 
United States is between voters on the one hand and 
property owners on the other. The forces of de- 
mocracy on one side, divided between the executive 
and the legislature, are set over against the forces of 
property on the other side, with the judiciary as ar- 
biter between them." 

In the popular meliorative view of recent days, 
government exists to forward social progress. This 

76 



THE LAST WORD 7^ 

theory is an approach to the truth, and like all half- 
truths, is the more dangerous for its seeming verity. 
Government should exist to govern progress. Mo- 
tion being universal and continuous, social progress 
of some sort is inevitable so long as society exists. 
Government should direct in harmony the admotion 
from nature and the exmotion from society. In the 
ameliorative sense, there is no true progress. Every 
new invention hailed as a godsend is a social ex- 
motion. In proportion as it is valuable, it pro- 
duces an equally valuable natural counter-admotion. 
Every so-called improvement makes necessary a for- 
ward step and keener competition all along the line. 
Every new economy of motion throws men out of 
employment. Poverty of motion and wealth of mo- 
tion, or the contrast of a special idle class and a 
special working class is the sign of an unequilibrated 
non-social advance. 

As government has reality only as its members 
consciously interchange social authority, so the in- 
dividuals within a government who refuse to socialize 
must be considered as foreign to the governing or- 
ganism. They are exactly analogous to the non- 
human elements — food and excrement — within the 
human body. They must be treated as environmental 
admentation. 

The social unbalance produced by an advance, 
based on idealization of Fixity, is to be equated not 
by a scheme of material taxation, but by the gov- 
ernmental redirection of the activity of those rich 
in busyness to the scientific liberation of those poor 
in busyness. This necessitates a new non-criminal 
code which shall define a minimum grade to be passed 



78 [THE LAST WORD 

by every citizen in a periodical civil service examina- 
tion covering all the vital data of the employments 
and parentage, and which shall oblige all units fall- 
ing below such grade to undergo an active social 
quarantine. This quarantine would be organized as 
an industrial army, and engaged upon public works 
under the direction of state departments and uni- 
versities. This army would be neither a penal nor 
a charitable organization. Its units under quaran- 
tine would be considered simply non-social. 

From the date of the establishment of active so- 
cial quarantine, no child would be suffered to grow 
up in idleness or over-specialized motion-restricting 
labor. Crime would be torn up by the roots. (Pres- 
ent experiments on prison labor farms prove that in- 
dividual, non-charitable work, even under our pres- 
ent absurd code, is almost always reformatory and 
industrially educational.) Such an army, graded 
throughout by civil service regulations, would pro- 
mote its units as rapidly as their disciplined powers 
of self-government and efficiency increased, until a 
final promotion ensured probation looking to dis- 
charge. In short, the compulsion of the military 
•war-draft would be employed in the industrial war. 
The compulsion of the public school system would be 
applied to adults. And the adult school is more 
needed by society than the child school. We should 
do better to let our children run wild and ensure to 
them through scientific parentage a good birth, good 
food, good home, good example and good appren- 
ticeship. 

Such an army, begun upon a relatively low grade 
qualification, would almost immediately defray the 



3?HE LAST WORD 79 

cost of its institution by draining cities of their 
wasting vice-holes, by relieving the police, judicial and 
penal systems of most of their present charges, and 
by making business "safe" through the equation of 
the labor market. A governmental "labor" bank is 
more needed than a governmental "capital" bank. 
Moreover, such an army could almost wholly take 
the place of our present military army and navy, 
which consume nearly three-fourths of all taxes with- 
out actual returns. The present army is mostly idle, 
resorting to artificial gymnastics for exercise. Army 
posts would lose nothing in defensive value if par- 
tially divided into state controlled experimental man- 
ufacturing and farming centers. 

The military supremacy of a nation rests, in the 
last analysis, upon the efficiency of its working class. 
And the efficiency of the soldier proper even upon 
the offensive is mainly a matter of just such sani- 
tary knowledge and executive training as peace-in- 
stitution work would afford. Of considerable im- 
portance also is the fact that only by an actual quar- 
antine, putting government in full possession of the 
delinquent's body, could the propagation of per- 
verts, etc., and the degeneration of normal offspring 
be prevented. Such an army, finally, would preven- 
tatively cut off the enormous and endless expense 
of present governmental cffarities and social asylums. 
Already these asylums for unsocials — idiots, im- 
beciles, epileptics and insane— are positively increas- 
ing the life rate of degenerates beyond that of the 
general population. 

The environment of a society is Nature and other 
societies. A tariff is the typical balance between 



80 THE LAST WORD 

governments. To be valid, all tariffs must be moving 
balances based on "reciprocity," which is another 
name for international admotion-exmotion. A scien- 
tifically determined tariff on a sliding scale is pos- 
sible as soon as high tariff, low tariff and free 
trade cease to be idealized as fixed principles. Mo- 
tional tariff and taxation are as reasonable and as 
undisturbing to industry as the normal fluctuations 
of all market values. Profound financial crises are 
due to prolonged fixity in artificial governmental 
laws. As the persistence of the word Idea symbol- 
ising Ideal Fixity leads to maximum emotive or de- 
volutionary passion in the human individual, so do 
cherished statutes develop internal liberations of ex- 
pressive social emotion or panic within the body 
politic. Protective tariff upon principle, like all 
charitable devices, defeats its own ends. This is the 
verdict of The Last Word. A beneficial tariff must 
be determined as an adjustment between socialities 
as a whole, not with reference to any special class. 
With respect to natural motion, all societies face 
a diminishing surplus. The world's supply of coal, 
which is largely responsible for the high speed of 
recent civilization, is limited. At the same time, 
there is a growing surplus of coal-using mechanical 
devices, which also save human labor. The practical 
result is a vast superhuman Charity and Human 
Fixity: a developing class consciousness desocializ- 
ing those who possess natural resources from the 
proletariat. Government to-day is barely awaken- 
ing to the idea of "conservation." But the involved 
principle of equilibration is not yet perceived; nat- 



THE LAST WORD 81 

ural resources are rather conserved as a miser hoards 
his gold. 

Mankind in the mass, no more than single man, 
can get something for nothing. The exmotion oscil- 
lation must be full and true. We hear grave econ- 
omists preaching the Utopia wherein machinery will 
perform all the labor of man and release him to the 
delights of leisure. Whilst this idea prevails, and 
whilst Matter and Force, that is, money and me- 
chanico-natural power, are idealized as values in 
themselves, machinery will continue to enslave the 
man ; and money will buy him, body and soul. 

The name of the Curse of Superhuman Charity in 
politics is "free government." Men who believe a 
particular government derives authority from fixed 
ideals or abstract principles, and hence confers super- 
human benefits, are self-enslaved. Patriotism as a 
passion is as deadly as Anarchism. Aristocracy 
originates in popular snobbery. The sovereign 
reigns because he is the people's superhuman Ideal. 

The universal Law demands that each man become 
a governor solely for the expansive joy of govern- 
ing. Such a communism is possible only to men 
realizing a continuity of social consciousness be- 
tween themselves and natural selves. This valid gov- 
ernment cannot be attained by a formal State and 
Constitution. Life is dynamic, not static, and con- 
tinually demands revised statutes. The more nearly 
finished the form of government, the greater its 
failure will be as a function of adjustment. The 
moving equilibration of society and nature, the busi- 
ness of good government, must be founded upon a 
consciously related body of active governors. Such 



82 t THE LAST WORD 

a community cannot be created by a Declaration or 
enforced by Decision. Government is not based es- 
sentially on equality of property rights, of suffrage, 
of representation, of taxation, of liberty, of oppor- 
tunity. To strike down a most abhorrent half-truth, 
— it demands no equality of Unanimity (apotheosis 
of Socialism). Statesmen are equal in the Realiza- 
tion, through Scientific Rationality, of the Value of 
the Governing Process as an end in itself. 

The master passions, Fear and Pity (sympathetic 
fear), are rotting ferments in the Constitutional 
State as in the Established Church. The Beast in 
politics stalks his prey openly and none through fear 
dare give him battle. The Beast, in turn, is maud- 
lin with the pity of libertine alms-giving. To-day 
Fear dominates the nations. The greater part of so- 
cial surplus goes to provide armaments and to hire 
alien soldiery. A small citizen militia of men know- 
ing the Universal Law of Immortal Life, and hence 
unafraid to die in necessary self-defense, would es- 
cape this burden of servility. 

Pity is equally responsible for modern war. If the 
Red Cross were forbidden the battlefield, if no- 
quarter, torture, pillage, confiscation, and all the 
rigors of savagery were advocated, there would be 
few failures in international arbitration agreement. 
Jingo and commercially promoted wars, like the 
Boer-British and Japanese-Russian, would never 
occur. 

Pity has engendered most of our civil crimes. 
Prisons principally foster criminals. Imprisonment 
— living death — is half-hearted penalty. All crimes 
should be punished by outright death or not punished 



THE LAST WORD 88 

at all. The men of Pity have been forced by facts 
to discontinue the Charity of Cure and attempt the 
Charity of Prevention. The Pure Food, Park, Vac- 
cination, Medical Dispensary, Dairy Inspection, 
Sanitation, etc., Laws are throwing up a wall of de- 
fense about the weakling. The man of feeble con- 
stitution is enabled to propagate his feebleness. All 
of these external safeguards are valuable, but they 
may be prostituted. The real enemy is internal. By 
normal digestion and sexual exmotion, the body 
should be vitalized to the point where it can resist 
native poison and bacteria. Primarily, we need 
neither prevention nor prohibition, but motions of 
resistance. With all that has been done recently in 
the above lines, the signs of race degeneration go 
steadily on. Our public and private asylums for 
the care and treatment of the mentally deficient and 
insane are being crowded more each year. Deaths 
from heart disease and apoplexy are not on the de- 
cline. Arteriosclerosis, Bright's disease, neuras- 
thenia and autointoxication are claiming more vic- 
tims instead of less. Cases of extreme longevity are 
not as numerous as a century ago. 

The problem resolves itself, in the last analysis, as 
do all human problems, into a question of more in- 
dividual exercise — Human Movement. This move- 
ment should be free movement, not the conventional 
makeshift of a fixed drill. Human nature, based on 
body organism, being what it now is, the natural will 
revolts against the barriers of the over-specialized 
trades and the crowded cities. The govermental 
remedy is the forced spreading out of cities, not by 
isolated parks with their sublime mockery of "Keep 



84 [THE LAST WORD 

off the Grass" signs, for loafers, but by private gar- 
dens, for workers. The working specialist must 
vary his confinement in monotony by at least as 
much out-of-door labor as will earn an equivalent of 
the food he puts into his own mouth. This is Na- 
ture's minimum demand upon the animal. Without 
this decentralization and despecialization, no reform 
however sound theoretically can ever make city life 
other than rottening. Without this motional libera- 
tion to social intercourse, the spread of Science, 
upon which depends human happiness, is prevented. 

Destructively, the so-called "Garden Cities" are 
approaches to a rational scheme for combining city 
or social with country or private advantages. Con- 
structively, the scheme will follow some plan more or 
less adumbrated in the Roadtown devised by Edgar 
S. Chambless. This is a group of rapid transit con- 
nected suburban dwellings, each having a reasonable 
amount of land for tillage and each furnished with 
a universal motor utilizing distributed power for de- 
specialized home manufacturing. Quoting from the 
Literary Digest in further description : 

"Says a writer in The Review of Reviews (New 
York) : 

" 'The invention of Mr. Chambless involves a sys- 
tematic and efficient distribution of public utilities 
with a completeness that has heretofore been thought 
unattainable, even in blocks of high-grade apartment 
houses, from which the masses of our metropolitan 
population are excluded by the high rentals. 

" 'It would be an anomaly to describe the Road- 
town as a sky-scraper laid on its side, and yet there 
are close analogies between the modern sky-scraper 



THE LAST WORD 85 

and the proposed Roadtown. This continuous house 
will provide its tenants, just as the apartment house 
now does, with water, heat, light, power and trans- 
portation — but for the latter a noiseless railroad will 
take the place of an elevator. It is proposed to em- 
ploy the Boyes monorail, as well as a moving side- 
walk, and to provide for mechanical deliveries of 
all packages and parcels, as well as for the trans- 
portation of passengers and food. Not only will 
an ideal combination of transportation service with 
house construction be secured by this plan, but 
very marked economies will be effected in such mat- 
ters as plumbing, wiring, and the use of cement. 
Mr. Thomas A. Edison has offered the use of his 
cement-poured house patents without royalty.' " 

The inventor and his assocates assert, we are told, 
that such savings in construction and maintenance 
will make it possible for a man to live in the country 
at the rent now paid for a second-rate city apart- 
ment, and enjoy all the benefits of electric power, 
light, gas, heat, hot and cold water, sewerage, irri- 
gation, vacuum cleaning, mechanical refrigeration, 
telephone, and message and parcel delivery. We read 
further : 

"That large class of workers in our large cities 
who are now commuters will naturally utilize the 
Roadtown, since it will give them many of the ad- 
vantages that they seek in the country, without de- 
priving them of libraries, schools, churches, or thea- 
ters. To a greater or less extent the Roadtown com- 
muters will be able to combine light farming work 
with labor at the city desk. 

"In the saving through the distribution of food 



SG THE LAST WORD 

supplies much is claimed for the Roadtown system. 
The purchase and preparation of food will be by 
wholesale, and meals will be ordered from serving 
centers conveniently located. It is proposed to make 
deliveries by means of special cars provided with 
warm and cold compartments directly to the dining- 
room of each individual home." 

Decentralization and socialization are to be equa- 
ted through improved means of communication ; 
transportation admitting of suburban residence; the 
telepost ; the microphone reporting public meetings ; 
moving pictures, and travelling organizations such 
as theatrical companies, branch libraries, university 
extensionists ; correspondence courses ; municipal, 
trades and agricultural exhibits on wheels; periodi- 
cals ; in short, by social-natural Motionality. 



SECTION V. 

THE LAST WORD IN MORALITY. 

The Last Word overthrows the categorical moral- 
ities ; but it asserts the validity of a universal Ethic. 
Science denies the Superhuman Charity of a Free 
Will in the sense of a human will independent of or 
abstracted from human motion. Every admenta- 
tion-exmentation vibration of consciousness is a re- 
sultant solely of hereditary and environmental 
rhythms. This absolves the criminal of crime by 
identifying him with his crime. As the only reality 
is motional mentation, so the doer and the deed are 
one. If the deed involves happiness, it must be a 
good deed for the doer. To punish a man for being 
happy, is irrational, since the human judge is ulti- 
mately in quest of happiness. To punish him for be- 
ing unhappy is equally irrational. To execute for 
the condition of being unhappy is ethically logical, 
since the unhappy man may indoctrinate others with 
the virus of his evil idealizations. But active quaran- 
tine is ethically more rational than execution, since 
it offers to the governing class exmentation, and ulti- 
mately, through the motional assurance of science, 
social admentation. 

The traditional moralist would have life bounded 
on principle by prison walls — "the square deal," "on 

87 



88 THE LAST WORD 

the level," "the golden rule," and similar "right"- 
angled rectitudes. But Life is eternally rhythmic in 
volution. All vital statistics follow curved lines. 
Conventional Morality substitutes for the natural 
conscience a fearful medley of dead supermen's warn- 
ings and a pitiful chorus of living submen's pleas: 
Fear and Pity. 

In a universe where all reality is the continuous 
harmonized interchange of motional consciousness, 
egoism and altruism lose their opposition. Every 
act of the individual center of mentational vibration 
is a motion to some life and from some life. Every 
act takes life and gives life. As in eating, the in- 
coming life is always "honestly" paid for by the 
outgoing apprehending motion and assimilative busy- 
ness. 

In a universe which, in the broadest sense, is a 
continuous Socialization, divine Ethics cannot be 
violated. The only conceivable violation of such a 
socialization lies in a mentational symbolism of a 
negation of sociality. This idealty is actual only 
as a particular Idea. The idealist seeks to cease 
thinking by abstraction; but the seeking is itself 
mentation. 

The moral essence is a matter of taste. Moral 
selfishness is the artificial will or desire to consume 
more than is given forth, to receive Superhuman ad- 
mentation and withhold human exmentation. The 
natural animal voids its excrement as diligently as 
it eats. The undomesticated pig is perfectly clean 
in habit. Judged by conventional ethics, children 
are supremely selfish. The charm of children is 
their purity from self-contamination, auto-intoxica- 



THE LAST WORD 89 

tion, or self-consciousness. The fattening of princi- 
pled Charity is more hurtful to man than the forced 
feeding of the penned pig. 

Right is scientific or conscientious busyness. Con- 
ventional ethics is invalidated in proportion as it 
holds to fixational or materialistic standards. The 
tithe, the dole, the reward, as ethical ends, are un- 
moral. No one can give more than he receives in 
money, except through personal busyness. Morality 
is busyness. The habit rich men have of keeping 
fixed hold of accumulating funds and occasionally 
disbursing them in immense bequests is absolutely un- 
moral. The compound interest which works won- 
ders in the bank is but an expression of the multi- 
plication of human need which alone gives legitimate 
value to money. Such a family as the "Jukes," num- 
bering in a few generations hundreds of thieves, pros- 
titutes and murderers, costing the state more than a 
million dollars in prison and asylum funds and loss 
of property and life, might have been certainly 
headed off by a small expenditure providing a proper 
employment or active quarantine for the original 
mother. And the justly due wages or the govern- 
mental quarantining cost originally withheld, when 
applied finally to remedy these matters (which for 
all their sinister aspect are not necessarily evils, that 
is, expressions of unhappiness), actually make of 
them immoralities by pauperizing the victims or 
prosecuting them as criminals. 

Even the Ultimate Generalization cannot be im- 
parted as a "free gift." It must be appropriated 
through the realization process of Science. All other 
so-called moral "Good" is an empty abstraction. 



90 £THE LAST iWORD 

The metaphysicians' universal Shoe actually fit's no 
two feet equally well. This is not modern pragma- 
tism. Reality or Truth, the pragmatists contend, is 
but a general name for the separate truths, which 
are true only for each individual life. This state- 
ment is a half-truth. It represents a rebound from 
the half-truth of altruistic idealism. As the altru- 
ist looks all away from himself, so the pragmatist 
looks all to himself. The former is willing to call 
himself a liar for the sake of Another; the latter, 
Another a liar to prove himself. Neither look to 
each other ; neither are fair to either. Science, in- 
cluding both altruist and egoist, finds verity for 
both in the moving balance between their extremes. 
Science affirms that truths though individual are not 
separate. Their truthfulness is in their very unsepa- 
rateness, their sociality. And this socialization is a 
universal expression of a Truth of truths, a harmon- 
izing Mediator of Eternal Value. 

In short, morality derives and is inseparable from 
true religion. The newness of the Last Word is evi- 
denced by the fact that there are no words in our 
civilized languages to express the true moral relation- 
ship of men. Competition is defined as contention 
over or for a reward. The reward represents the 
controversial abstraction. In actual competition, 
the exchange of consciousness is direct, and the act 
of interchange is its own reward. 

Happiness and unhappiness are absolutely in the 
self. No infliction or disappointment can invalidate 
the act which springs from a morally harmonized or 
scientific will. The value of the moral act, as herein 



[THE LAST lWORD 91 1 

defined, is universally, eternally self-affirming and 
certain. 

The sympathetic passions, Fear and Pity, are per- 
versions of the imitative ape-instinct which enabled 
numbers of animals to act together on an exmotive or 
emotional basis of mutually independent cooperation. 
To-day, the Man of Business is organizing society 
on a cooperative basis in corporations, trades unions, 
banks, insurance companies, etc. So long as the 
trades-unionist fears and fawns on the corporation- 
ist, and is, in turn, pitied and patronized by him, so 
long will these organizations bear evil fruit. When- 
ever the Charitable element invades them, they are 
corrupted and invalidated, as, for example, in the 
case of "fraternal" (low-rate assessment) insurance. 
Only a national calamity, such as an earthquake, 
may now reasonably invoke in the human animal tribe 
the semblance of fear and pity. And it is gratifying 
to note that whereas these unwonted oscillations of 
natural admentation were wont a generation ago 
to produce external paralysis and internal prayers 
to Providence, the more recent catastrophes have 
been buoyantly and sanely met by the world's infor- 
mal insurance society, governments, the business in- 
terests, railroads, commission houses, etc., being first 
to respond. Altruistic Pity dare not act more than 
halfheartedly, for its wholehearted action would 
mean self-sacrifice to death — the very thing pity 
most fears. 

Only business — by which is meant complete busy- 
ness — busyness which, satisfied as an end in itself, 
cares not else when or how or who or what it is 
busy for or against or by or with — busyness without 



92 THE LAST WORD 

principled restraint — is morally beneficial. Consider 
the typical case of old school altruism : The worthy 
man who fell among thieves on the way to Jericho 
and was rescued by the Good Samaritan. Was the 
unfortunate pitiable? No. He took a dangerous 
road without adequate protection. Who profits by 
the Good Samaritan's thorough-going charity? The 
thieves who have one more victim for the return trip. 
The valid remedy: The groceryman in the neigh- 
borhood who finds his business interfered with by 
these robbers and who presently unites with other 
tradesmen and chases out the robbers. It is the men 
of business the world over who have made highways 
safe for traffic. The Dark Ages were essentially en- 
lightened and ended not by Reformation or Renais- 
sance. These movements were themselves by-prod- 
ucts resulting from the advent of the voyaging, dis- 
covering, manufacturing, guild-organizing, coinage- 
harmonizing, printing, policing, food-preserving, etc., 
etc., man of business. Modern history and, in a 
great measure, valid Science begin with the emer- 
gence into sacred and secular activity of the protes- 
tant tax-paying producer. 

In conclusion — the sociologists who declare that 
human beings must war upon one another to secure 
the survival of the fittest are still laboring under a 
fixed Ideal of Fitness. They fail to take account of 
the Last Word in their own Science. The pioneering 
heroes of the Gunnison Tunnel competed with non- 
human, wild nature and survive humanly fit. The 
Man of Business is making it possible for the first 
time in human history for humans to turn their 
swords into plow-shares and compete in cooperation. 



THE LAST WORD 93 

But human life is not more valuable in itself than 
natural life. Natural life supplements the human 
life within the divine life. Every game of childhood 
is played for the fun of the play. Every business 
of adult life must be conducted for the zest of the 
busyness. In this game of universal life there are no 
"rules." Rules in boxing are to keep out wrestling, 
and vice versa. But Life includes all the games, and 
so holds the sum of their interesting dramatic quali- 
ties. 

The only immorality, once more, is the unsports- 
manlike desire to impede the game by withdrawal 
from it, to break the unity of universal fellowship. 
Caution and slow moves are permissible; but pity 
and fearful hanging back invalidate the sport. Play- 
ing this game with Science, no man loses and every 
man wins. The temper of the true sportsman and 
the key-word in valid ethics is Good Will. This is 
what no charity can give to the soul and no competi- 
tion take away. It is to be the fruition of idealistic 
meliorism ripened into scientific optimsm. The nat- 
ural will is Good Will. Whether gaining or losing, 
devolving or evolving, the Sportsman is conscious of 
being himself a valued counter in the Game of eter- 
nal universal Benevolence. 



SECTION VI. 

THE LAST WORD IN ART. 

Reread the last lines of the preceding section with 
a view to the esthetic import. What a harmony ! A 
uni-verse in eternal rhythmic motion. How fair is 
the field of that great Game of Life, played without 
rules of principled restraint. Go into the woods and 
meadows. There is all about you ceaseless love and 
war without quarter. There is emotional activity 
and dispassionate content. Scarcely will you find a 
single dead bird of the thousands that fall — so lust- 
ful of life are the lowliest worms. 

The Art of to-day is wistful, idealistic, abstracted 
from Reality. The Art of to-morrow is willful, in- 
dustrial. Its name is beauty-in-motion or Grace; 
mentationalLy, Graciousness. Animals and children 
are always graceful in the eyes of Science. Here is 
the esthetic Gospel of the Last Word. Every one 
may acquire the Lincoln brand of beauty in gracious 
service without servility. 

The historical belief in human Fixity has proved 
as fatal in Art as in Religion, Government and Mo- 
rality. The art-form echoes the scientific progress 
from fixation to motion. The silent and massive 
Sphynx is the type of ancient art. Sculpture, be- 
cause of its substantiality, was the highest art-form 

94 



THE LAST WORD 95 

of ancient history. The Greeks are unrivalled. 
Painting is the next stage, reaching the highest ar- 
tistic sincerity in the middle ages. Painting admits 
of more motional representation than sculpture. It 
is more plastic as a medium — less enduring. Early 
modern art excels in Poetry — the motional ballad 
and melo-dramatic forms leading. Contemporary 
artists use the Romance liberated from poetic re- 
straints, and excel in Music, the most liberated of 
art forms. 

Such materialism as exists in art ideals to-day is 
melioristically blended with human motion. The 
woman seeks the charity of the beauty-shop as an 
adjunct to personal busyness. Yet the taint of a 
false ideality remains and produces the humanly un- 
social condition of a beautiful class and a beautyless 
class, just as the same ideality creates in Government 
a master and a slave class ; in Morality, a saintly and 
a sinful class. Science shows the humblest grace to 
be irresistible. Only Fear and Pity are fatal to 
grace. 

The melioristic temperament is an advance upon 
pagan, pessimistic sensualism. The meliorist sees 
future beauty in present ugliness. He sees the angel 
in the unsculptured block. The scientific optimist or 
Motionalist seeks beauty in the process of sculpture, 
the harmonized interaction of eye, hand, chisel and 
granite. 

Who are our true artists of the universal Life? 
In America, for example, there is the old school en- 
tirely abstracted from the here and now. A Haw- 
thorne dreaming over his custom-house desk of Rome 
and a Marble Faun ; oblivious to the survivors about 



96 THE LAST WORD 

him of that generation that had fought pirates, first 
carried the flag to Hindostan, Japan and Madagas- 
car; all but oblivious to his Salem, within memory 
the greatest sea-port in America and the center of a 
spirit of such high adventure and fine flower of enter- 
prise as drew from the life-loving expedientist, Burke, 
his incomparable Oration. Later, we have Whit- 
man, the sensual loafer, whose cult is appropriately 
established in Parisian salons. End of the decadent 
line is the expatriated super-sensualist, Henry James, 
whose best efforts are mainly the stories of vulgar 
amours enmeshed in Verbal Circumstances, and who 
frankly confesses that before the American business 
man he stands "absolutely and irredeemably help- 
less." 

Then there is the new American school, which 
clothes the traditional ideals in local colorings. 
Lastly, there are those so-called realists, who, de- 
spairing of esthetic philosophy altogether, bawl 
pragmatic detailed Discord. 

This is the age of Industry. Who is the poet of 
Business ? 

Popular Art to-day, the art of best-selling fiction 
and drama, is wholly charitable, that is to say, it is 
liber-tine. It fulfills the same purpose as beer and 
morphine. It neither educates the public nor reports 
the public. It is not a light in darkness ; it is not 
even a mirror of things as they are. It simply 
offers an abstraction — a getting away from reality, 
a representation of things as they are not. Consider 
the dramatic art. So far from reflecting reality, the 
theater exactly projects unreality. What is the 
meaning of the popularity of vaudeville? It means 



THE LAST WORD 97 

that there is an unprecedented monotony or restric- 
tion to movement in our mechanical industries. The 
essence of vaudeville is relief from monotony. What 
is the meaning of the vogue of melodrama? It means 
that for a large, newly created commercial class, the 
"middlemen," romance has been extracted from life 
almost within living memory. Whatever such want 
to-day, though it lies at the most distant end of the 
earth, it is to be had instantly and surely for no more 
exciting an adventure than putting the hand in the 
pocket and paying for it. Melodrama is passionate 
excitement. What is the meaning of the comic opera 
and burlesque craze? It means that women are in 
an unprecedented degree being removed from their 
essentially feminine role in the home. Comic opera 
and burlesque exist by exploiting the feminine. And 
so on. Our so-called fine arts are, in fact, the slaves 
of our industrial arts. And like all slavery or charit- 
able labor, this one is fatal. Science must make the 
industrial arts and the fine arts one. 

The most universal art is music. Not only men, 
but the birds, and all the morning stars sing to- 
gether. Every so-called substance has a pitch and 
timbre. Every motion is rhythmic and musical to 
an ear of infinite compass. The symphony of a 
great orchestra is technically the most complex of 
single arts. Poetry owes its beauty to the lyric or 
metric essence, and ceased to be popular and pow- 
erful (save in sacred hymns) when folk-song and 
troubadours vanished. Music antedates words and 
the advent, through the abuse of the recording art, 
of unhappiness. Men must learn to sing, and sing at 
work. Play-Work is Music. 



08 ,THE LAST WORD 

The highest human art is the dramatic. The 
drama takes in all humanity. It includes all the 
minor arts — plastic sculpture, scene painting, poetry 
and music. Its interest is supreme in human society. 
The drama is based on inter-action. This inter- 
action must be freed from fixational bounds. Our 
present day dramas are invalidated by conventional 
ethic. They are not true dramas. The "good" man, 
or hero, is always fixed to win if the author be an 
optimistic moralist ; or to lose, if the author be a de- 
spairing "realist." The play of the play must be- 
come the thing. Plays must permit the spectator to 
act as well as the actor. This is only possible in 
plays of rational ideation. 

The theater is fundamentally the one perfect hu- 
man institution. It is absolutely socialistic. It alone 
takes in all classes. And it is, oppositely, absolutely 
individualistic. It alone leaves every one free to 
feel and think after his own nature. This means 
that the theater in one form and another will replace 
all other institutions. It is already absorbing the 
church. Churchmen admit it can preach better and 
more forceful sermons than the pulpit. It is des- 
tined to dominate politics. The next revolutionary 
Uncle Tom's Cabin will make its debut upon the 
stage. 

The theater is affecting Education. It is becom- 
ing the great socializing school of the people. As 
church services are becoming more theatrical, so are 
school methods becoming more dramatic — actoresque 
— industrial. The theater will, in short, become the 
great popular medium of interchange in science. 
[This interchange demands travelling companies. An 



THE LAST WORD 99 

established theater is as evil as aa established church. 
The theater, when sufficiently motional, will largely 
absorb the club, novel, magazine and newspaper. It 
will become the meeting place and harmonizing cen- 
ter for men of all nationalities and professions. Its 
art has the supreme attraction of the human element. 
It will reduplicate the tavern of the old socializing 
days. There moving devices will illustrate current 
and international contests ; there directly transmit- 
ted moving pictures and phonographs will record 
current events ; there will speak travelling lecturers, 
demonstrators and industrial exhibitors. There the 
democracy regaining the lost art of conversation and 
individual thought will deliver its own editorials and 
sermons. The Theater is to become the Salon and 
Forum of the world Society. 



SECTION VII. 

THE LAST WORD IN EDUCATION. 

The beginning of education is mothering. The 
deadly desocializing effect of fixational Ideality has 
put the sexes apart and made sexual intercourse pas- 
sionate instead of emotional. Woman fears man in 
shame ; man pities woman in chivalry. Through that 
pity, she is become to-day the most helpless and un- 
happy of female animals. The suicidal devolution- 
ary effect of Passion is strikingly evidenced in the 
prevalence of erotic literature, unnatural steriliza- 
tion, divorce, white slavery, etc. Sexual sensitive- 
ness has been largely destroyed, with the result that 
the sexes lose differentiation. This loss is then corn- 
batted by artificial, sentimental sex appeals. The 
Idealization of Human Fixity is supreme in sexual- 
ity. Society puts a strong negation upon the whole 
sex topic, and then is forced by the continuous uni- 
versality of vibratory mentation to resort to this 
same topic in underhanded servility. In the verse, 
in the novel, on the stage, it would appear that all 
the busyness of life centers in romantic love. Act- 
ually, in the polite world, the artificially separated 
sexes meet after a long day of exhausting slavery 

100 



THE LAST WORD 101 

on the man's part and ennui on the woman's part 
to exchange corrupting gains for venomous sweet- 
ness, as blind worms that crawl for shelter into the 
same crevice and have but strength to sting each 
other to death. 

Woman must cure herself in self busyness. The 
employments which have been taken from the home 
and industrialized must be followed up by woman. 
But woman must govern her own industries. The 
old type of home is going. She must not be dis- 
mayed by the disorder of this "moving day." She 
can make the world of business a new and purified 
home. The same people live in both. The home 
spirit of good will is a matter of scientific education. 
The advent of woman's economic independence and 
suffrage is as desirable for men as for women, but 
it must work disaster if charitably bestowed. 

The family is to become a cooperative business 
unit in which the child shall have a place of equal 
social respect with its parents. Unless the child is 
recognized as a means to the completest adult admen- 
tation-exmentation, the growing habit of voluntary 
race suicide will annihilate the cultured people. The 
child needs no charity. Its activity is paramount. 
From its incessant questionings and automatisms, the 
parent flees to the fixational charity of a tax sup- 
ported "free" school. 

The public school is the enslaver of childhood and 
the debaser of parenthood. It teaches children to 
obey instead of to govern themselves. It teaches 
all alike — killing the first initiatives of individuation. 
It desocializes by separation into classes and encour- 



102 THE LAST WORD 

ages a facility in recorded speech divorced from 
realization; that is, it reduplicates the very con- 
joined conditions which anciently brought unhappi- 
ness for the first time into the world. Elaborately 
charitable school-books make the student dependent 
upon book exposition — unable to solve an original 
problem. The charity of an unknown teacher, un- 
married herself, relieves some thirty or forty mothers 
and fathers of their most intimate responsibilities, 
with the result that our public schools and colleges 
are hot-beds of moral vice, body degeneracy and 
mental stultification. These mothers would not like 
to be called "common" women in the sexual signifi- 
cance of the word, yet they give their sex product, 
body and soul, to be moulded by a childless man or 
woman who is both a hireling and a stranger. 

The "common" school must go. The university 
can continue only as a governmental experiment sta- 
tion. The parent must not shirk the task of educa- 
tion. Already in many quarters the school is merg- 
ing into practical business. Students on wages work 
half time in regular industrial establishments and 
give half time to the college. This is a half-way 
measure. The full step will be taken. Already a 
great manufacturing company has announced its in- 
tention to train its own employees in a technical 
school. Every large business is locating an educa- 
tional department. A carpenters' union and con- 
tractors' association is paying boys to go to trade 
school in Chicago. Education must become all busi- 
ness. The industries are already voluntarily send- 
ing exhibits to schools. The schools will go to the 
industries. 



THE LAST WORD 103 

The history of educational method, beginning with 
the rote system, and leading on up by the object 
lesson to manual training, is a progress in busyness. 
The logical Last Word in education is complete 
busyness. The child must act out its fairy-stories in 
the wonders of science. The child is utterly truthful 
and unfanciful by nature. It lies and exaggerates 
only as principled restraints are set about its mo- 
tions. Such lying is a witness to the Truth. The 
child must become an actor. Pedagogy must become 
dramatic. The charitable ideal which seeks to en- 
large the esthetics of the slums by handing out Perry 
pictures, and to stuff the stomach of the beggar in 
hope of increasing his manhood, is as sensible as 
the present ideal of stuffing the young mind in hope 
of increasing its wisdom. Child and parent must in- 
dependently exchange consciousness. 

The dramatic method necessitates the theater and 
the unities. The chapel or "big room," which is be- 
coming a feature of the modern school building, and 
the spontaneous growth of high school "frats," are 
straws in the wind which is to blow over all artificial 
barriers between curriculum subjects, between classes 
and between the school and the workaday world. The 
stage of education will play the Game of Life. For 
busyness is life. School taxation will be diverted to 
provide in the new family Home of Business an ap- 
prentice place for the child where only valuable ob- 
jects will be created. Can business afford to educate 
its business men and women? It is already affording 
to uneducate them. 

In the section on Government, it was argued that 
even in cities a considerable space for gardening 



104 THE LAST WORD 

must be attached to every home. The proper basis 
of child education is agriculture. Biologically the 
child belongs to out-door nature. Its integrity, pu- 
rity, sweetness, can best be maintained in a natural 
environment. As it grows, it may as naturally fol- 
low the evolutionary course of man's history and 
come into the new nature world of civilization. The 
four children recently admitted to Harvard Univers- 
ity, though more advanced than the average student 
of twice their school-life, are not infant prodigies. 
They have had private schooling based upon the 
study by natural inclination first interesting to them. 
Other studies were rationally derived from this lead- 
ing theme. Agriculture offers not only a basis for 
all educational branches, but their natural unifying 
principle. In the soil and its products, all forms of 
business originate and are thence coordinated. 

A motional universe rationally demands a mo- 
tional education for motional ends. Briefly, valid 
education is whatever promotes scientific, conscious 
intercourse between life centers. Conventional edu- 
cation of pupil and professor is as fatal, therefore, 
as the conventional religion of penitent and priest, or 
the conventional government of subject and ruler. 
Education cannot be e-ducative more than a-ductive. 
Motion follows neither the line of greatest traction 
nor the line of least resistance, but a line determined 
by these two in conformance to the universal law of 
harmonizing Rhythm. Pupil and professor must 
equally educate themselves by the purely mutual in- 
terchange of admentation-exmentation. 

This is the age of child study and child apprecia- 
tion. To-day the unspoiled Conscience of the child 



/THE LAST WORD 103 

is ready to meet the completed Science of the adult 
in affirming the universal Law of the Continuity of 
Consciousness. And this is the brightest augury for 
the swift realization of the Gospel of The Last Word. 



THE END. 



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